Silent Spring Synthesis Essay

Her diction is undoubtedly her main “weapon” that she utilizes to address the issue of pesticides. With words such as “direct target,” “poisons,” “killing,” “death,” and “lethal” in her arsenal of care and peace, she roots an alarming sense into her audience by showing pesticide as a relentless beast that causes nothing but harm. In a way, Carson amplifies the word pesticide into much more sinister concept: death. She personifies it with her dire word choice, considering it a “universal killer” (28) and a “wave of death” (50) that was perpetuated by farmers and the authoritarian. She compares the farmers who use pesticide to “judge and jury” who have “doomed” innocent creatures that they are either ignorant of or for whom they care little for (31-32). Overall, her use of diction strikes penetrating pictures into the mind of the reader that excites images of farmers, who she claims are on a “mission of death,” (22) killing so many innocents with pesticides that they induce a need for a “casualty list” (24). She shows clear disgust for farmers, considering them and their pesticides killing missions, and she excellently conveys that message while being very convincing in how detrimental pesticides

DDT was a war against nature. The aerosols were sprayed on farms, gardens, forests, and homes. When an organism became immune to an insecticide, a deadlier one was developed. DDT had “the power to kill every insect, the song of birds, and the leaping of fish in the streams.” The chemicals of life were synthetic creations brewed in labs. DDT polluted the air and damaged many necessary factors of life.

The documentary Climate of Doubt talked about whether climate change was a scientific truth, it provided many details about the denial of climate change, which I was not familiar with. Although majority of the scientists, precisely, 98% of the climate experts, believe that the major cause of climate change is human activities; there are plenty of people reckon that climate change is a kind of natural phenomenon. They also point out that global warming consensus is not based on science, but for the political purpose. From my perspective, the severity of climate change indeed can affect the decisions of policy-makers, such as green policy and governance. But it does not mean that people can just ignore the consequences of the enormous emission of greenhouse gases in the past few decades.

What are Pesticides and Why are they used? A question that often times arises in are minds. But there is only one explaination so that way farmers can have crops with a higher yield and will bring more money. On the other hand, pesticides are not a good idea because, they are in the food we eat and water we drink. These Pesticides are hurting tens of thousands of animals and humans each and every day and we don´t even realize it either.

Carson is spreading the word about pesticides to anyone who wants to know because she believes that its the people right to know and that the governments and organizations should not be hiding information about them. Towards the end of Chapter 7 I feel as if this quote is directed right at the public “The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”(98).

In today’s world, there are many people creating new chemical substances that has negative effect to our world. Rachel Carson, in her article "The Obligation to Endure" argues that the pesticides and other chemicals we use are harmful to more than just the environment. I agree with Carson in her article, in that we should reduce most of the harmful chemical use and instead use technological inventions.

Imagine having so much pesticides in use that people and animals were actually dying from it. In the 1950’s the overuse of pesticides was a serious problem. Rachel Carson was an activist who was against the use and overuse for these pesticides. She wanted to address this problem to the government and the public and warn about the harmful effects pesticides have on the environment and the people. In “A Fable For Tomorrow”, Rachel Carson utilizes ethos, logos and pathos in order to bring awareness to the overuse of pesticides.

The EPA's benzovindiflupyr oversight doesn't end there. In a litany of bad decisions, the EPA also approved 3 more pesticides -- difenoconazole, propiconazole and azoxystrobin. Like benzovindiflupyr, the impacts of these pesticides on our wildlife were also not fully investigated. It's plain negligent and potentially dangerous. Not only did the agency refuse to study these pesticides individually, but it also "refused to consider the impacts of benzovindiflupyr when combined with these other chemicals, despite the likelihood that synergistic impacts may make these products more

Rachel Carson’s opinion on pesticides differed from the scientists and chemical companies she criticized because those scientists and chemical companies claimed spraying pesticides on agricultural fields was necessary to ensure Americans and the rest of the world got enough food to eat. One of her opponents and representative of the chemical industry, Dr. Robert White-Stevens, warned of “starvation, disease, and death if pesticide use was restricted (478).” Although Carson didn’t disagree that pests need to be controlled, she thought the ever increasing toxicity of pesticides used and their unfettered application was dangerous. Unchecked, people would eventually suffer from side effects.

Garcia continues her essay on about how farmers use pesticides to get a larger crop. However, using pesticides can cause serious effects for humans. The effects are cancer, psychiatric problems, infertility, and dermatitis. Organic meats, poultry, and dairy products

To answer the first question, no, growth alone is not sustainable. A quote stated by Bill Mckibben says, “To truly stop ruining the planet, society must break its most debilitating habit: growth.”(Laszlo). He believes that the change will not happen fast enough to preserve the planet.

Rachel Carson was a courageous woman who in the early 1960s called attention to the harms of indiscriminate pesticide use. In Silent Spring, a beautiful book about a dreadful topic, she explained how pesticides were accumulating in the food chain, damaging the natural environment, and threatening even the symbol of American freedom, the bald eagle. In spite of industry attempts to paint her as a hysterical female, her work was affirmed by the President’s Science Advisory Committee and in 1972 the EPA concluded that the scientific evidence was sufficient to warrant the banning of the pesticide DDT in America.

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.

Silent Spring was a controversial book because it challenged long held beliefs on both environmental health and gender roles. The government had put a lot of effort into creating images of the rise of pesticides use as a positive societal advancement. These chemicals were marketed as helping our children and making our lives easier. Carson’s book directly challenged this belief. Suddenly people were forced to confront the fact that their actions (or alternately their inaction) related to at home and governmental pesticide usage could actually be harming their families. Before eventually accepting this truth the public denied the validity Carson’s claims. This denial was made easier by the misogynistic campaign that arose in response to Carson’s

Just like every other first-year college student around the world, I make my own decisions regarding my ecological footprint. Although the opinions of parents will still play a large role in my decisions, I am forming my own opinions, too. Every single person is capable of being a part of our “story,” (Kingsnorth and Hine 7) and when knowledge is spread, there is less of a dispute about the existence and “urgency” (Pongiglione 179) of climate change. Moving forward, though, it is the responsibility of “writers, artists, poets and storytellers of all kind” (Kingsnorth and Hine 8) to make the “31%” of the US population who believe that climate change “will not at all...affect their personal dimension” (Pongiglione 180) understand that one day it will. Proactivity should be encouraged, and the possibility of turning things around should be highlighted so that we can remain prideful in our “belief in” our society and civilization as well as the “belief in its future” (Kingsnorth and Hine