Rachel Carson Pesticide Analysis

The year is 1962, and almost all of America accepts the excessive use of pesticide DDT, except one. While everyone blindly went along with what the corporate companies had to say, environmentalist Rachel Carson sought to get behind the mystery that was pesticide use in America. She saw through the chemical companies’ lies, and with the use of her book, strove to end their deathly practices. Silent Spring voiced her opinion over the catastrophic consequences of this chemical abuse and could be considered the prime factor that led to the ignition of regulation programs, such as the Environmental Protection Agency. In her infamous publication, Carson questions the harmful effects of pesticide use, the unfair practices of chemical companies, and
what action the public can take on in order to persuade the audience that the use of pesticides should be banned.
Villainizing chemical companies and farmers, Carson presents to her audience how their actions and use of pesticide is immoral. These companies behind the pesticides, she claims, are careless and narrow minded, for “the problem could have been solved easily” by a simple switch of crop breeds. Implying that the farmers didn’t have to turn to pesticides as a solution, she demonstrates her competence and understanding of the situation at hand.
The people using these pesticides ignored other solutions, as demonstrated by the author, which in turn cause the audience to question the chemical companies’ capabilities and look to the environmentalist for answers. Carson later goes on to state that chemical companies are waging war against Mother Nature, using farmers to do their dirty work. She describes the farmers as puppets sent off to complete “their mission of death” for the companies’ “needless war.” During this time frame, America is taking part in the Vietnam War, thus the idea of war and the terror it brings is still fresh in the audience’s minds. This militaristic diction calls upon their feeling and puts emphasis on the amount of lives that suffer in such events, and for what? A war with no gain and many losses, such as the war in both Vietnam and nature’s front door. Carson evokes the audience’s anger and frustration linked to the current events and directs them towards the metaphorical war the chemical companies are waging in order to convince the public that pesticide use is but another dead end and should be stopped immediately. What might be even worse than the companies’ manipulative actions, however, is that the
farmers believe that what they’re doing is properly justified. Carson suggests the farmers are “gratified” with the deaths of countless red-winged blackbirds. Though a word with positive denotations, its use here does the opposite and depicts the farmers as villainous and sick. It may not be necessarily true, but Carson implies that it is so in order to urge the audience that these pesticides are not being used in good will. In addition to their negligence, these chemical companies have an unacceptable amount of power in regards to their use of pesticides and are taking advantage of it. Carson compares their power to that of an “authoritarian,” identifying the companies as a single, nameless villain. The negative connotations associated with this word implies that these companies are everything but what America stands for- freedom, equality, and justice. Misusing their power for their own selfish needs, Carson urges the audience that they must stand up against the chemical companies’ reign of tyranny before it’s too late. If there’s one thing the chemical companies and farmers behind DDT are, it’s heinous, and Carson attempts to persuade her audience to think as such in order to protect the natural world from any more harm.
In an another effort to push her audience to see eye to eye with her, Carson informs the audience that pesticides is harming the wildlife that lives in those treated forests.
Birds, one of these innocent victims, are “finding themselves a direct target of poisons.” The negative connotation implies that the birds, who haven't done anything wrong, are being treated like pests and are suffering unjustly because of that. Whether the audience sees foul as a nuisance or not, the extremity of poisons may make them rethink if using pesticides is the correct way to go. Not only have birds found themselves victims, but an unprecedented number of them have died from pesticide use already. Carson describes the death toll as a scale where, in one pan, there’s “the leaves that might have been eaten” and, in the other, “the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of birds.” The sentence structure, itself, acts as the metaphorical scale and puts emphasis on how there have been so much death because of pesticide usage. If anything, the excessive description of corpses would disturb the audience and call upon their empathy to ban pesticides in order to prevent any more suffering. Birds weren’t the only ones in harms way, for “rabbits or raccoons or opossums” also lived in the affected areas. By providing specific examples of woodland critters, Carson slyly takes advantage of her audience’s interests and uses them in her favor. Pesticides may kill the “pests” that are
haunting farmers, Carson argues, but they also kill hundreds, if not thousands, of other creatures that didn't deserve deserve to die, and the only way to stop this is by standing against the companies behind it.
Carson puts great emphasis on the fact that the pesticides harming birds can also harm humans in order to persuade her audience to see the severity of these chemicals and why they should be banned. Repeatedly throughout the passage, she uses words such as “poisons” and “universal killer” to describe DDT, claiming that they are, indeed, a universal killer. The negative connotations, as well as the denotations, of these words create a sense of malevolence from the pesticides and reinforces the idea that there’s no exception to what is harmed by these chemicals; they destroy anything and everything in their path. Workers, skilled professionals, were able to be harmed by the pesticides left behind on treated lands. They had “collapsed and went into shock, and escaped death only through medical attention.” The idea that the pesticides are so harmful as to bring grown adults on the edge of dying pokes at the audience’s fear, for it reveals that humans, too, can be harmed. This situation also appeals to the audience’s empathy, for the organisms living in those forests no doubtedly have no access to professional help and are surely dead or suffering. There are very few things in America that are allowed that retain such toxicity, which may lead the audience to question the morality behind continuing the use of something as lethal as DDT. The deadliness of the situation is brought up again when Carson claims that nothing can survive the pesticide-treated areas the workers were in, stating that the foliage they came in contact with “had been treated a month earlier” and “coated with a lethal film.” The negative connotations puts emphasis on the pesticide’s toxicity, coupled with the fact humans were affected by the chemicals despite them being there for so long, suggests that pesticides are a double-edged sword; it kills everything and continues killing for weeks to come. The audience, faced with the frightening truth, might reconsider the use of pesticides and whether the good outweighs the bad. Carson effectively pushes the concept of humans also being harmed by these chemicals and by doing so, she potentially persuades her audience that they should be outlawed.
After providing all of the evidence needed to incriminate pesticide usage, Carson then calls upon the audience to take against chemical companies by urging a ban on pesticides. She claims that the audience wasn’t informed, for they were part of the “countless legions of people who were not consulted.” Her diction implies that a number larger than her audience have been swindled of their voices by the chemical companies, that they've lost their God-given American right to have a say in what happens in their lives. Enraged at this, the audience might rally against the companies. At the same time, however, the audience’s ignorance, their “moment of inattention,” is what had led to this power imbalance. The denotation suggests that America didn’t mean to turn their backs on Mother Nature; they were preoccupied elsewhere. Considering that the US is in the Vietnam War at this time, it would make sense that the war in the trees was less important in peoples’ minds, but Carson calls them out, saying that they’ve let their attention slip and now they need to refocus and fix things. The audience, faced by this, may feel guilty and agree to petition against pesticide usage as she insists. There is still hope for the audience, for “those to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature have a meaning that is deep and imperative.” This description and its strong connotations appeals to the audience’s values and draws them into a call to action. They are the heroes that could save Mother Nature, Carson urges, which would spur up the audience’s spirit and persuade them to act against the chemical companies. Through her language, Carson insists that her audience is the only group who cares enough about pesticide use to protest and urges them to do so.
Carson argues that the use of pesticides is dangerous and immoral, as are the chemical companies behind them, and puts out a call to action towards her audience in an effort to convince them to stand up. It may take a long time, but the end result is worth the effort.