The Needless Genocide of Nature In the passage from Silent Spring, renowned biologist Rachel Carson utilizes rhetorical strategies such as ethos, hyperbole, and understatement to call for an end to the harmful use of pesticides. She uses a tactful combination of hyperboles and understatements, and indicates her authority to speak on the topic by demonstrating appeals to ethos.
Rachel Carson establishes ethos to begin constructing her argument against poisonings. In lines 8-12, she cites the Fish and Wildlife Service to demonstrate that her concerns extend to credible organizations and are not unfounded. She documents an example where farmers in southern Indiana “went together in the summer of 1959 to engage a spray plane to treat an area of river bottomland with parathion” (lines 12-16). To further establish her ethos and authority to speak on this topic, she also supplements this example by explaining a healthy, eco-friendly alternative to how the farmers could have responded. In lines 17-22, she states that agricultural practice revisions would have sufficed for a solution, making the poisonings unnecessary. By offering a solution, Carson not only
…show more content…
By citing credible organizations and offering her own eco-friendly alternatives, she proves to the reader that she takes a particular interest in the environment and is educated to speak on it. Pairing powerful understatements and hyperboles to contrast with one another show the reader that the practice is both needless and selfish. These rhetorical techniques have a powerful impact on the reader, whose ignorance prior to reading the excerpt can no longer suffices to excuse the lack of action. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is a deeply persuasive book that not only advocates for an end to pesticides but also speaks to the obligation humans hold to protect their
Silent Spring is one of the most important books of the environmental movement. It was one of the first scientific books to talk about destruction of habitat by humans. As a result, one can imagine that Ms. Rachel Carson needed to be quite persuasive. How does she achieve this? In this excerpt from Silent Spring, Carson utilizes the rhetorical devices of hyperbole, understatement, and rhetorical questions to state the necessity of abolishing the practice of using poisons such as parathion. Carson starts out by using the symbiotic nature of hyperbole and understatement to paint the whole practice as dangerous and unnecessary. She further strengthens her argument by using rhetorical questions to make her readers see the ethical flaws and potential casualties caused by deadly pesticides.
Rachel Carson, before publishing Silent Spring, would major in marine zoology at Pennsylvania Women's College, where she would develop her interest in the naturalism and conservation going on at the time (Lear, 23). After graduating, she would take a job at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, where she would write about different issues concerning the environment at the time. After writing several books to some success, she would begin work on Silent Spring, as she would find her naturalist causes to be her impetus. She even later on in her life wrote to her friends, What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important. " (Carson, 17)
To conclude, Rachel Carson is a skilled writer who employs many different rhetorical strategies and formats her information in a deliberate way to maximize the effectiveness of her argument. She appeals to emotion, but supplements her points with facts, examples, and expert opinions. Her book, Silent Spring, surely convinced many of the dangers of poisons like parathion, and inspired some to seek alternatives to aerial
In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring Rachel Carson captivated the American public. Carson wrote about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides in the environment, and her writing was very reflective of the events occurring at the time. There is a strong connection between Carson’s writing and the Cold War. In fact, if it were not for the war, the American public may not have responded in the same way to Carson’s writing. Carson used tone and content as methods of getting her point across to the public. Silent Spring shined a light on the damage done to the environment as a result of the Cold War, and this issue was finally being recognized by American public.
After reading both passages, the most prevalent taste left in the reader's mouth is one of "irony". The intention of Wilson's work is to show two views. One is of environmentalists who are upset with the critics because they are not conserving enough and are only inte...
Ehrlich, P. R., & Ehrlich, A. H. (1996). Betrayal of science and reason: How anti-environmental rhetoric threatens our future. Washington, D.C: Island Press.
The subject of death is one that many have trouble talking about, but Virginia Woolf provides her ideas in her narration The Death of the Moth. The moth is used as a metaphor to depict the constant battle between life and death, as well as Woolf’s struggle with chronic depression. Her use of pathos and personification of the moth helps readers develop an emotional connection and twists them to feel a certain way. Her intentional use of often awkward punctuation forces readers to take a step back and think about what they just read. Overall, Woolf uses these techniques to give her opinion on existence in general, and reminds readers that death is a part of life.
What would take its place were a global economy and a fragmented understanding. This new era was characterized by big cities, fruits being readily available during obscure times of the year, and, consumer goods being flown into any part of the world. Now the days of small villages and locality were growing scarce. As humans continually lose track of the story behind the beginning and the consequences of the lack thereof; the population remains in a state of conflict with the life that supports them. In 1962, “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson’s acted as the catalyst to Suzuki and many others understanding of what the environmental movement would come to be. The definition would take on several different faces throughout the world, ranging from logging to, chemical pesticides, and CFCs. The pesticide DDT and the effect it had within the food chain resulted in the increasing number of deaths of birds. The chemicals that make up CFCs, found in deodorant, ended in the ongoing depletion of the ozone layer. From these cases, a new realization of what consequences ignorance brings and raises the new question of how to predict and stop
In “Silent Spring”, author and biologist Rachel Carson addresses the threat of deadly poisons, specifically parathion, to not only farm pests, but also to the entire milieu of wildlife in and around farmlands. Carson does well to influence and even configure her reader’s thoughts on the liberal use of pest control through rhetoric so to gain the reader’s support. Although diverse and abundant with rhetoric in her composition, three of the most significant and influential applications of rhetoric are through appeals, multiple rhetorical questions, and hyperbolic generalizations.
On September 27, 1962 Rachel Carson released her sixth book, Silent Spring. On publication day, the advance sales of Silent Spring totaled 40,000 copies and another 150 copies were sent to the Book of the Month Club (Frontline: Fooling With Nature, 1998). Silent Spring remained on the bestseller list for almost a year. The world was beginning to take notice. Countless experts and organizations have proclaimed Rachel Carsonâs book the starting point of the environmental movement. Carson described numerous case studies where the use of hazardous pesticides, insecticides, and other chemicals led to environmental problems all over the world. Whether directly or indirectly, everything in the environment is connected and affected by each other. Silent Spring describes, in depth, the harmful effects that chemical control has placed on all components of the environment. They include: air, water, land, wildlife, plant life, and humans. I will discuss each of these categories as examined in Silent Spring along with my personal analysis.
As generation x’s, and millennials, we are constantly thinking about new ways to improve our lives, rarely considering the fact that the way we have decided to expand our species is destroying several others. Biologist Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring took on the chemical industry and raised important questions about humankind's impact on nature. In a portion of the book she writes specifically about how human agricultural practice is deeply affecting the natural world. Her purpose to convince the reader that the ways humans are choosing to expand their species is having a detrimental effect on nature using macabre diction and rhetorical questions.
Rachel Carson’s “ Silent Springs” was written with the intent to warn the public of the harmful use of chemical pesticides such as DDT. Soon after excerpts of Carson’s “ Silent Springs” started appearing in The New Yorker and succeeding in warning the general public of DDT and other pesticides; chemical manufactures took to the public as well to express the positive outcomes of DDT and other pesticides. Thus leading to one of the biggest controversial arguments on a book that Justice William O. Douglas called the “ most important chronicle of the century”. (Indiana.edu)
Nothing was more important in the birth of the EPA than the decades of extremely obvious pollution, but pollution is not all that contributed to the birth of the EPA.The ideas of one author brought this upfront and attracted immediate public attention. Published in 1962, Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring', a critical look at pollution in the United States, jump-started the environmental movement. Carson, who was a bird watcher, created her book from her fear that fewer species of birds would be singing each spring unless pesticide poisoning was curtailed. The readers of her book, however, were less alarmed by the prospect of a "Silent Spring" than they were about people dying from any number of hidden poisons lurking in what had previously seemed a mild environment. It was not hard to become hysterical after reading in Carson's book that "the common salad bowl may easily present a combination of organic phosphate insecticides" that could "interact" with lethal consequences to the unsuspecting salad consumer.
It’s no doubt that since the beginning of the new millennium and even before, environmental conservation has been a big issue. It only makes sense that people would hotly contest such a topic. Some argue that it might get a little too overblown sometimes, and others say we need to hear it more. Some, like Edward O. Wilson, just want to see an agreement met. In his 2002 book The Future of Life, Wilson satirizes the bull-headed and uncooperative criticism that the two sides often give each other. In his fictitious discourse, Wilson clearly demonstrates how a stalemate can occur between opposing extremes by using stylistic mirroring, over-the-top generalizations, and grandiose diction.
In the mid 1940’s, Carson became concerned over the use of synthetic pesticides which were devolved after World War Two. A friend of Carson sent her a letter describing the deaths of birds around her