While
reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,
I have experienced an existential crisis, the realization of humanity’s neglect
of the environment, and an urge to go out and just do something to prevent the slow deterioration of nature, all in the
first half of her book. Once a marine scientist who worked for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service in Washington DC, the deceased ecologist is recognized as
the revolutionist who initiated the contemporary environmental movement. Rachel
Carson utilizes powerful diction with negative connotation to conjure up an
appeal to the audience’s pathos. She always follows up her bold claims with
scientific proof coming from credible resources to confirm herself as a
plausible writer.
Devoted
to exposing environmental degradation, Carson focuses on an environmental
problem and then builds the intensity of man’s impact on that specific detail.
On a chapter dedicated to the strange disappearance of birds and their songs,
she writes, “This sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of
the color and beauty and interest they lend to our world have come about
swiftly, insidiously, and unnoticed by those whose communities are as yet
unaffected” (Carson 103). Using “obliteration” exemplifies the amplification of
its negative connotation to invoke a stronger emotion towards the loss of “color
and beauty and interest.” This conjoining of two unlike things accentuates the
contrast between humanity’s eradication of the environment and nature’s endeavor
to survive through the adversities.
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| 10 out of 10 would recommend. |
Continuing on, Carson
supports her claim by citing a credible source which states, “…in Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Alabama the Field Notes
published quarterly by the Nation Audubon Society and the United States Fish
and Wildlife Service noted the striking phenomenon of ‘blank spots weirdly
empty of virtually all bird life”
(Carson 104). She does not stop there as she proves the credibility of her
source, saying, “The Field Notes are a compilation of the reports of seasoned
observers who have spent many years afield in their particular areas and have
unparalleled knowledge of the normal bird life of the region” (Carson 104).
Carson does this to extinguish any doubts or suspicion of the reliability of
her words and to further establish her position as an author as well as a
marine scientist.
Although I am only
half-way finished, I cannot wait to continue reading. The information on the decay
of the habitat the humans occupy is jam-packed into a single binding that is acknowledged
all over the world. I will definitely return to complete my full-book review on
Silent Spring by the one-and-only
Rachel Carson.
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