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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Silent Spring By Rachel Carson

716 Words3 Pages

In the excerpt from Silent Spring, Rachel Carson accusingly delivers a powerful argument against aerial pesticides, especially parathion. Carson emphasizes that farmers who eradicate “distasteful” birds with parathion are heartless. She deploys a variety of language to support her central argument: exemplification, rhetorical questions, diction, and emotional appeal. Carson believes poisoning birds--with parathion--is cruel and inhumane. Foremost, Carson evokes pity towards the defenseless birds, and anger toward the farmers for their actions, with emotionally-charged words. The repetition of the word “killing” supports Carson belief that the destruction of birds is savage path farmers choose, because the word connotes evil. The evil, associated with the word, arouses anger at the farmers for their ill doing; additionally, the word …show more content…

The severe allegation is coupled with the purpose of parathion application; the poison was applied “to ‘control’ concentration of birds [through elimination]”. Then, Carson references the “Fish and Wildlife Service”, because both parties agree that “parathion treated areas constitute a potential hazard”. As a result, her credibility is established, because she has other people opinions to support her argument. In addition, Carson provides an example--”Southern Indiana ”--to illustrate the harmful extent to which parathion application could reach without outside control. Ironically, the farmers choose the expensive, non effective method over “a slight change in agricultural practice”, and only because they were “persuaded the merits of killing”. She excoriates that there are no explanation that could justify such amounts of pointless killing, they are just

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