Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

In our daily lives, we are always trying to control our surroundings and what we experience. Though this can aid us in achieving our goals, our controlling behaviors can also be problematic. Rachel Carson shows us an example of this in her novel Silent Spring. Throughout her novel, she conveys how man’s efforts to control nature are mostly harmful. She exhibits this by using scientific diction, irony, ethical appeal, and imagery. Using these literary devices, Carson uncovers a usually unseen perspective surrounding pesticides and other chemical controllers we use, and how they oppress nature’s innate systems and operations.
Rachel Carson uses scientific diction to a great extent in Silent Spring, with intent to reveal her intellectual studies and earnest efforts to expand her message about man’s attempts to control nature. Carson uses an effort to include technical terminology in her book, and we see this throughout the passage. For example, Carson displays her extensive knowledge of biology when she says “by their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled” (ll. 22-24). It is assumed then, that Carson has done research to come to this conclusion. She shows us a reason for man’s fault in using chemicals on nature, as we disregard other life’s complicated structures. Carson is also shown using scientific diction when she says