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
The rhetorical occasion of this excerpt is to inform others about the dangers of chemicals on earth’s vegetation and animal life.
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
Ehrlich, P. R., & Ehrlich, A. H. (1996). Betrayal of science and reason: How anti-environmental rhetoric threatens our future. Washington, D.C: Island Press.
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...
Rachel Carson has forever changed the very dynamic of the United States. Her books brought environmental issue to the forefront of public concern. She advocated fiercely and passionately for a change in the government’s policy with the environment. Her work and tireless effort centered on the growing problem of insecticides and pesticides in the general public, namely DDT. The chemical itself was extremely prevalent in the domestic markets but also a popular insecticide used during WWII. In one of life’s great ironies, the creator of DDT, Paul Muller, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1948. DDT left a gilded imprint on America’s memory but Rachel Carson was to show the opposite was true. The publication of Silent Spring sent a wave of support for environmental activism through the general public. Her book became a catalyst for ecological change. Her message could not discriminate and disseminated quickly through the US. The word spread far and wide enough to where it reached the highest levels of government, including then President-elect John F Kennedy. Carson led by a powerful conviction, advocated both to Congress and to the public for change. By sheer conviction alone her calls were answered, and in more ways than one. Rachel Carson left behind a truly enviable legacy of charisma, passion, and dedication. But what I believe to be her most important legacy was the fact Rachel Carson proved that one person can make the difference for everyone. As in her case to dramatically alter the way American’s view their environment and the stance of the Federal government on nature.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who wrote Silent Spring, is considered to be very much influential in the cause for the environmental movement. It is however important to note that she was not the proprietor of this revolution. Prior to Carson and her best-selling Silent Spring in 1962, there were numerous other authors, activists and organizations that spoke out about the issues that plagued the environment. Examples of this include John Muir (founder of the Sierra Club in 1892), Gifford Pinchot (the first head of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905), Fairfield Osborn, author Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt, who penned Road to Survival (Sale 1993).
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.
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.
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