Preview

Rachel Carson Silent Spring Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
268 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Rachel Carson Silent Spring Analysis
The Obligation to Endure is the second chapter from the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Carson presents the persuasive argument that pesticides such as DDT should be kept away from our homes, our place of business, and our children. In the 1950s and 60s DDT was a very popular pesticide that was commonly used. The hazardous effects were unknown. Carson expresses her founded concerns about the adverse risks and toxicity associated with these pesticides using logical, emotional, and ethical appeal. This is demonstrated in the quote, “ Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surfaces of the earth without making it unfit for life?” Carson’s impassioned argumentative essay was composed as a warning

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Rachel Louise Carson was born on May 27 ,1907 , along the Allegheny River. Her father , Robert Warden Carson , was an insurance salesman whereas her mother , Maria Frazier , was a stay at home mother. At a young age Carson developed the hobby of reading . She particularly liked to read the “St. Nicolas Magazine”. Ironically , she later in her life publish multiple stories in that magazine. After elementary school Carson attended Parnassus High School , located in Kensington , Philadelphia. Four years later, she graduates from that school and earns a scholarship to Pennsylvania College for Women. She aims to major English and become an English teacher. In college she is inspired by her biology professor named Mary Scott Skinker and she changes…

    • 171 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are so many bad things in this world and the environment is one of them bad things. Our environment will never just go away but it’s definitely needs to change. It’s causing damage to our friends and family, it’s taking away all of our animals, and it’s hurting the world we know around us. If we don’t do something about it, will the world’s population go down because of a great amount of people dying? Will the animals become extinct and no one ever talk about them again? Will the oceans be able to hold their ground and keep producing the oxygen it’s giving us? Throughout this essay, Sandra Steingraber does a great job using ethos, pathos, and logos while talking about the environment and the issues it is causing to the people and the…

    • 1271 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edna’s first awaking happens in response to her being around people of Cajun descent who openly communicate and touch. While spending time on the beach with a Cajun women Edna is touched, this touch is not in a sexual way, but is outside the norm and starts Edna’s journey towards what she will accept versus what is socially acceptable. Edna says that mother-women “created the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm” {Baym 567). Edna does not consider herself to be a motherly-women. Edna’s second awakening occurs when she pushes the bounds of her immortality by swimming out farther than she thought that she could, but still makes it back to shore. This leads her to try new thing even to the point of speaking back to her husband. To speak…

    • 230 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" she calls attention to the dangers of pesticides. Through her use of imagery, rhetorical questions, and similes she has created a very passionate argument towards whether or not farmers should use these poisons that affect much more than they think.…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gabrielle Roy’s Windflower was discussed in the interactive orals. Roy introduces the theme of “how to live.” Roy continually uses visual imagery to show the different lifestyles. New Fort Chimo and Old Fort Chimo are the two extremes of living, with or without luxuries such as paper [80], & flour [54]. Roy uses the clothing she wears, such as hats, boots that “were worn out in no time by the jaggedness of a soil for which they were not intended.” [6] As Elsa wanders. Her attitude towards raising her child, Eskimo and white people change to match those of the people of that land.…

    • 352 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Rachel Louise Carson was born on May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. What made Rachel Carson famous was her legacy and contribution to society which was alerting the world about the environmental effect of fertilizers and pesticides through her writings and books. This discovery affected society because after one of her books, “Silent Spring” came out in 1962, it proved her thesis about the harmful effects on certain pesticides and fertilizers. Rachel Carson’s discovery ended up having the pesticide DDT banned which ultimately probably saved many lives. Also, Rachel Carson’s discovery helped shape the growing concern for environmental help.…

    • 99 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Duty and responsibility to the living and non living aspects of Earth seems reasonably obvious to the common person. Humanity has been gifted with awe-inspiring and picturesque scenery and worthy resources that have allowed us to evolve past the belittled ape or animal. Yet, even through our actions in past and present, humanity has shown an aptitude for non-committal towards their obligation to the very thing that provides them with life. The over-industrialised world, monopolistic commercialism and disreputable capitalism have led to the metaphorical hell on earth represented in Scott’s panorama of…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An article published in The New Yorker in June 1962 alarmed people countrywide and as anyone might expect, brought a yell of outrage from the chemical pesticide industry. "In the event that man were to reliably take after the lessons of Miss Carson," grumbled an official of the American Cyanamid Company, "we would come back to the Dark Ages, and the bugs and illnesses and vermin would indeed acquire everything of importance. " Even the main stream media had their opinion. Monsanto distributed and disseminated 5,000 duplicates of a leaflet satirizing Silent Spring entitled "The Desolate Year," relating the destruction and bother of a world where starvation, infection, and insects ran wild since chemical pesticides had been…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This entry focuses mainly on the chemical DDT, which is over consumed on various vegetation, however, the overall idea is regarding our environment and how human actions are abolishing it, although it may be unintentional. To be more specific, the central idea consists of the environmental actions that are backfiring on our population in a negative way. Furthermore, in my opinion, Rachel Carson desires to spread awareness about the harmful deeds that are destroying our environment and our society’s health.…

    • 221 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Wasabi

    • 4056 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Silent Spring is a book that explains the environmental and human dangers of uncritical use of pesticides, leading to new changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. It also looks at the effects of insecticides and pesticides on songbird populations throughout the United States, whose declining numbers generated the silence to which her title refers. I began this book on October 12th, and completed reading on November 30th. This book was by no means an easy read, as it was 400 pages, but was interesting as the author (Carson) posed many ideas about the effects of pesticides on bird populations and our environment in general.…

    • 4056 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    She describes a certain situation in an orchard where workers who had contact with parathion “collapsed” and “escaped death only through skilled medical attention.” Carson dramatizes the event and emphasizes the severe condition of workers to portray that humans are also a direct target of parathion since the workers had only “escaped” death. In presenting humans as a direct target of pesticides, she implies a possibility of a future society where there is no nature and health of themselves are sacrificed for profit of crops. Carson presents the “ever-widening wave of death,” which will continue if farmers are to continuously spray parathion. By stating that the wave continually grows, Carson reveals that parathion’s consequences are widespread, and will soon include much of the human race, so that death may occur to most of society. Carson uses this metaphor of a “wave of death” to represent that the deaths caused by the application of parathion are similar to those caused by war, instilling a sense of fear in her audience about the dangerous future of society where many are killed after the use of pesticides. Carson then questions whether the workers who were working in fields knew that the “fields he were about to enter were deadly.” The universality of the damage by parathion is emphasized when…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anne Marbury Hutchinson was a puritan who came to an American colony following the puritan leader John Cotton. She was home-schooled and self taught herself. Her spouse was William Hutchinson, a chief magistrate of the colony of Portsmouth on the island of Aquidneck. She lived from 1591-1643 in a Massachusetts colony for a while until she was brought to court for being charged with sedition and contempt of the Government and was kicked out. Hutchinson challenged the authority of the Priests at the church and said that they were not able leaders of the New Testament. She was a brave strong leader who didn’t give up and fought as hard as she did. When women heard about this story they tried to be strong and determined just like Hutchinson. Also…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When the environment dramatically changes, humans are left with a false choice: accept or resist; only one of those options, acceptance, leads to survival. People often like to think that, in any given situation, there is a choice. However, when one of the options is suffering and death, no choice exists at all. Life is evolutionarily programed for survival. One of the primary tools of survival is adaptation. If the situation one finds oneself in is irreparably difficult, dangerous, or deadly, adapting to the situation is the only way one can hope to survive.…

    • 1412 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In "The Obligation to Endure," Rachel Carson explains how man is destroying earth because of the advancements in science, along with the continuous use of numerous chemicals. During her essay, she points out to the reader that humans continue to use chemicals to produce our products since they like having the ability to manage the growth of the plants. Carson argues that the use of chemicals is damaging "poisoning" nature along with destroying our environment…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Since toxicity is usually depicted at a more largely organized form, the film subverts this expectation by introducing toxicity at a much smaller scale. In doing so, the film is able to urge its audience to view toxicity in a similar way in order to understand the importance one person can have in a process. Just like each person that began to adopt the recipes contributed to a larger group, the film argues individuals must also view themselves in a similar way to understand how to build their own communities to stop toxic practices. The gradual snowball effect the film depicts implies that the toxic practices did not occur overnight. However, just like the toxic practices did not emerge instantly, the resistance against toxicity does not happen overnight and instead must gain momentum even if it begins with at a small level. The message Matheson’s Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel: Wind Speed 85m per hour presents is twofold: toxic practices began at a small local level before expanding to more widespread use and the way to stop toxicity increase is by resisting the practices in a similar way it grew—at the small scale and person-to-person…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays