Silent Spring
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962, and since then the book has been widely credited with launching the environmentalism movement among us. It has inspired widespread concerns among the public with pesticides and pollution of the environment. Silent Spring can also be credited with facilitating the ban of the pesticide DDT in the United States in the early 1970’s. Throughout the book, Carson claimed that there were detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment and especially with birds and the thinness of the eggs that they laid. She claimed that there were also reproductive issues and even death relating to the DDT pesticide. She accused the chemical industry of falsely reporting information and misleading the public; she also accused public officials of accepting the company’s claim without any further research needed. She proposed a different approach to pest control as an alternative to DDT.
Rachel Carson begins chapter one with a story; a story of what spring was like both before and after the DDT poison. In describing a picture of the town when it was most abundant and plentiful, she said that “all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings” (1). The imaginary town “lay in the midst of a checkerboards of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields” (1). In winter “the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the sees heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow” (2). The countryside was “famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them” (2). Other people “came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay” (2).
Then, her story tone suddenly changes from a happy and blissful tone to...