Silent Spring Sparknotes

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Silent Spring is an environmental non-fiction book written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962. The title is a reflection of the world pure in its nature and unperturbed by human influence. The book plays a role of intriguing the audience about the damages that have occurred on the earth due to the indiscriminate human activities by the use of pesticides. The book is geared towards spurring a revolutionary change in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. During this period, industrialization was pushing individuals towards conformity and thus the world was experiencing human development without taking into consideration the environmental damages. Carson's book purposes to enlighten the world about contamination of the different media …show more content…

Due to her vast knowledge she obtained from the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1928, Carson highlights the immense challenges that mother earth faces in striking a balance between the pressures posed by humans with self-regulating nature’s ecosystem. She explains that during the Second World War the use of DDTs were prevalent in the wars and although they did not have a significant effect on human life, their current use have pushed them to affect both the human, wildlife and marine life. Significantly, Carson’s inspiration to write the book was a result of her friends concern of the decreasing bird population after authorities sprayed DDT in her hometown to control mosquitoes. During the same time, there were massive campaigns nationally against a dangerous pesticide that was being used to control the fire ant in the Southeast. Having been a science writer, Carson was well acquainted with pesticide research and had a moral and logical backing against her reasoning. The book starts with a foreword that highlights the motivation for having written the book. The book has a table of contents organized into seventeen chapters that highlight the different effect of the use of pesticides to the ecological system within the earth surface. The book is chronologically organized into chapters that flow and express a single idea for the writer. This organization has given the book much readability regarding the flow in its content and format to a

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