Summary: Carson, Silent Spring
Editor’s Note: For this assignment, I needed to read and summarize the published piece or content listed below, and then provide a response or assessment of the writing.
Summary
Carson begins by describing a utopian environment or climax community where man and nature live together in balanced harmony and both entities have a mutual respect for one another. She quickly shifts to a post-apocalyptic vision of the world with little to no wildlife or other natural flora that was a result of human destruction, which, initially, could be interpreted as due to pesticide overuse and poisoning or nuclear fallout. Carson goes on to explain that although no U.S. city has yet experienced all of the nature atrocities she describes, that result is inevitable if man continues to fail to recognize the havoc and destruction he is wreaking throughout the natural environment with the massive use of pesticides. This overuse is achieving his small goal of eliminating certain destructive insects while also destroying a significantly larger amount of the environment and threatening the health and lives of humans. Carson compares this pesticide use to the impending nuclear war of the time because she believes the effects of pesticides are comparable to the fallout from nuclear war. Although Carson admits that pesticides are productive in limited amounts and in limited areas, she contends that this use must be first researched to determine what, if any, long-term effects pesticides have on nature and humans.
Response
I briefly skimmed some of the other chapters in Carson’s book, and I was surprised to see that those chapters include far more technical and scientific material that appeared to be objective and fact-based. Given the title of her book and the content of the first two chapters, Silent Spring seemed like it was an editorial on the man-made dangers to our ecosystem and a plea to the human population to stop destroying our world through the use of pesticides. I was surprised to see the contrast in content because it seems as if every science-based journal or book I’ve had to read was strictly a reporting of the facts and never included the personal opinions of the author. I wondered if Carson wrote her book with a combination of story-telling and scientific facts in an attempt to make it appeal to the everyday layman as well as fellow scientists? Maybe she thought that speaking to the non-scientist reader as well as the scientist reader would allow her to be better received by all audiences and increase her level of credibility? Once that connection was made with the layman reader, maybe Carson’s content was an attempt to grab the emotional attention of the layman in the hopes of inspiring them to start a grassroots effort to curb pesticide usage?
I also thought Carson’s pretty clear connection of pesticides to nuclear war was a bit extreme at first. I haven’t read much about pesticide usage or over usage, and I haven’t really seen much about it in the news, so the comparison seemed a bit aggressive. However, I saw the publication date of Silent Spring was 1962, and I can imagine the heightened fear and anxiety of the time of imminent nuclear war was at both the back and forefront of peoples’ minds. This realization made the comparison far more understandable. Carson clearly felt very strongly about pesticide usage, and if nuclear attacks or fallout didn’t kill everyone, I’m guessing she believed pesticides would kill everyone. I also thought she may have tried to draw comparisons of nuclear war and pesticide usage to emphasize the importance of dangers of pesticide use and poisoning. Maybe she thought that since everyone fears nuclear war and the aftermath (if there is an aftermath) that comparing the two would open even the layman’s eyes to the dangers of pesticides and start them thinking about what man is doing to the planet and why they’re doing it.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading Carson’s chapters. I love it when people are rationally passionate about saving the environment and questioning ideologies that other people may not see as destructive as it relates to nature. I love that she included that human side of concern for her environment and then backed it up with facts to support her cause. I have a lot of respect for the people who fight for the environment without coming across as having lost all sense of rational thought (which I, unfortunately, see from time to time, and I find it disheartening because I think those people do more harm to the environmental cause than help).