Response 4: "Nature's Sweet or Savage Impressions": The Savage & the Virgin in Moby Dick



"As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage" (Moby Dick).

 

This final L632 response develops some of the observations I made in my first presentation on Moby Dick.  In response to the lengthy, baroquely constructed "sentence" containing the clause “…receiving all nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary confiding breast…” (Chapter 16: "The Ship," 169-70) I asked the question:  "How can nature be at once 'savage' and 'virgin'?"  This question originated from the preconception that the "savage" is ferocious, while the "virgin" is docile.  Other oppositional association clusters are:  

savage = active, violent, kinetic, rough, brutal, uncivilized, unrestrained, male, dark-skinned

virgin = passive, pacific, static, gentle, tender, civilized, contained, female, fair-skinned  

The attribute that the savage and the virgin share, however, is purity--that is, purity in relation to the restraining/corrupting influence of civilization for the savage; and purity in relation to the contaminating/self-dissolving effect of [sexual] experience for the virgin.

Thus the attribute of purity binds the savage and the virgin, as signified by Queequeg's matrimonial embrace of the insomniacal Ishmael.  In other words, the savage/virgin opposition that Queequeg and Ishmael respectively embody temporarily dissolves in the farcical bedroom scene. 

By exhibiting some of the stereotypic attributes of the savage (i.e. as listed above), Ishmael gradually evolves into a parodic type of the Romantic hero.  For example, he perceives Queequeg as the pure and noble savage of Romanticism (“…I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart…,” 144).  At the same time, he becomes increasingly prone to wild fits of impassioned feeling, as when he calls for an axe to break down the door behind which Queequeg had sequestered himself in the “Ramadan” chapter.  In other words, while Ishmael perceives purity in the savage (i.e. exercises his colonialist gaze over Queequeg), he indulges in increasingly savage--i.e. unrestrained--antics.   At the same time, however, the mock-Romantic hero is merely one facet of Ishmael--as is also the case with Ahab, whom Peleg describes as "savage sometimes" (177).  

Indeed Ishmael rapidly loses his whaling virginity so that by Chapter 57 he enunciates himself as a "savage" ("I myself am a savage," 376).  This self-enunciation gradually leads to the lyrical reverie fusing fish and bird, sky and sea, (378) recalling the equally lyrical "fish in the sky" passage with which the "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" section of Walden concludes.

 

 

Response 3: Wherein Mrs. Comstock Experiments with Rejuvenation and Becomes White: Resurrecting Racism in Gene Stratton-Porter

Anti-Chinese yellow peril flyer

Japanese immigrant girl (early twentieth-century California)

Janet Malcolm's review of Gene Stratton-Porter's Her Father's Daughter (1921) in The New York Review of Books (1/15/2009) focuses on the novel as a record of the kind of anti-Asian immigrant sentiment that was prevalent in Los Angeles in the early twentieth century.  If indeed Stratton-Porter was readily susceptible to this predominant collective sentiment as Malcolm suggests, the racial "hatred" that Stratton-Porter allegedly "enthusiastically embraced" can be read symptomatically.  Specifically, Stratton-Porter's anti-Asian racism is readable as anxiety symptom--the Asian immigrant "other" becomes in the yellow perilous discursive context of a racially divisive L.A. the abjected [disease] symptom that she attempts to contain and manage--that is, ironically, by relocating to L.A. from a life-long residence in Indiana to recover from flu-exacerbated overall exhaustion. 

Thus if Oka Sayye (which does not read as an authentic Japanese name) is symptomatically killed off in Her Father's Daughter (to contain orientalist anxiety), how then, can A Girl of the Limberlost, published twelve years prior to Her Father's Daughter be reread in the context of Malcolm's allegation of anti-Asian racism?  This question can be answered with the observation that Kate Comstock's "rejuvenation" experiment in Chapter 18 reinscribes the over-valuation of white skin both as a sign of female beauty and as a passport for upward socioeconomic mobility.  This reinscribed over-valuation could become the anti-Asian subtext of Her Father's Daughter.                 

Through a dubious home-concocted organic "evil-smelling" skin-peeling regimen, Kate Comstock alchemically achieves the "delicate porcelain white" skin that is the prized socioeconomic passport enabling her to pass for "the other girls' mothers" (345, 347).  While her whiteness (as racial attribute) is affirmed through her proud assertion, "I always knew I was white underneath it [tanned/sunburnt surface]" (349) the alternating appearance/disappearance of the highly valued and extremely elusive Yellow Empress/Yellow Emperor moth specimen provides Limberlost with its subtext of ambivalent desire.  In fact, the Yellow Empress/Emperor reads like an allusive orientalist short-hand sign, or enigmatic cipher, for the nonwhiteness that is otherwise discursively banished or marginalized (or uneasily contained) through Kate Comstock's skin-whitening "experiment."  The yellow color of the prized moth, then, becomes the color of subversive and ambivalent desire (i.e. Philip Ammon's for Elnora).  At the same time, yellow is intensified into the gold embroidery and accessories that materialize the economic value that Edith Carr splendidly embodies at her engagement ball. 

Thus it can be concluded that while racial whiteness emerges as prized spectacle through Kate Comstock's "experiment," yellow is de-racialized (i.e. becomes an ambiguous multivalent sign) even while uneasily suggesting the banished racial nonwhiteness of Mrs. Comstock's strange beauty "experiment."          

    

Response 2: Comstock & Queequeg: Fluctuating Significance/Value/Identity

Comstock > Cornstock > [Miss] Cornstalk

 

[Mr.] Queequeg > Quohog > Hedgehog

This second L632 response addresses the following question I included in the Gene Stratton-Porter handout:  When Elnora's family name "Comstock" morphs into "Cornstock" and thereafter "Cornstalk" (Limberlost 10-11, 49), this name change sequence suggests that "Comstock" is yet a mutable signifier for her unfixed and fluctuating socioeconomic status at this early point in the novel.  How does this name change phenomenon compare with the mutability of “Queequeg” in Moby Dick?

As I observed in my first L632 presentation, Queequeg’s name undergoes several mutations, indicating thus that he is the "savage" embodiment of the unpredictable forces of nature.  Thus the significance of his name "Queequeg" fluctuates constantly, which, in turn, invites [elusive linguistic] control and appropriation.  In other words, naming is an overcompensatory attempt to exert control over nature, as Melville's complex taxonomies parody throughout Moby Dick.  After the clamshell-laden iron-fisted Mrs. Hussey addresses Queequeg in a comically civil manner, (“Mr. Queequeg,” Moby Dick 162) the genteel name becomes a distorted caricature of "Queequeg" (i.e. as “Quohog”) before finally morphing into “Hedgehog” through Captain Peleg's crudely irreverent enunciation (185-86).

While Elnora attempts to achieve discursive authority in the mathematics classroom by regaining ownership of her name through eventual rectification ("'My name is Comstock,' she said distinctly," 11), Queequeg is seemingly oblivious to his own name distortions.  Instead, he secures higher wages through his valorous acts (i.e. than Ishmael, the novice harpooner), thus becoming invested with greater economic value (as Brooke Opel observed).  By contrast, Elnora's value is directly embodied by her alter ego Edith Carr--specifically in the latter's spectacular guise as the rare and valuable "Imperialis Regalis," or the Yellow Empress moth (356). 

It can be observed that both "Comstock" and "Queequeg" have functioned in Limberlost and Moby Dick respectively as mutable signifiers comparable to circulating currency, or to fluctuating currency values.  In fact, the metamorphosis of "Comstock" suggests both fluctuating stock value and metonymic significance (i.e. as "Cornstock," Elnora experiences herself as laughing-stock).  At the same time, the metamorphoses of "Comstock" and "Queequeg" signify the hybrid human/vegetable/animal identity fusion that remained a major discussion topic in L632.  Specifically, "Comstock" acquires a vegetable element ("Corn-") through the mathematics professor's misreading, while Peleg infuses "Queequeg" with an animal element ("-hog") before the name morphs into a full animal name ("Hedgehog").  "Comstock" undergoes a similar final mutation:  as "Miss Cornstalk," Elnora has been [mis-]enunciated as a full vegetable organism.

Although Elnora resists the professor's mis-enunciation, her vegetable affiliation is strengthened throughout the narrative as she gradually evolves into an idealized mystical seer of nature.  Thus it is implied that while men approach nature as scientific objects of investigation (e.g. Philip Ammon), women, by contrast, are pre-invested with an instinctual affinity with nature that is readily romanticized (i.e. Elnora).  Thus while Elnora embodies the ideal fusion of nature and culture, learning and affect throughout Limberlost, Queequeg caricatures the savage of the South Pacific seas and the untamable forces of nature throughout Moby Dick.  In either case both characters embody the forces of nature that invite control and appropriation, as their respective name changes signify.  At the same time, their strategies for resistance to that control and appropriation are variously determined by gender, race, class, and situation in life.
                

Response 1: E__ C__: Semantic Truncations & Romantic Triangulations in the Limberlost

As Christoph Irmscher suggested, the E__ C__ name initializing phenomenon in Gene Stratton-Porter's A Girl in the Limberlost is too uncannily symbolic to be merely coincidental:  E[lnora] C[omstock], E[dith] C[arr], E[lvira] C[arney].  Each of these E__ C__ initialized women participates in a triangulated relationship.    

     Elnora Comstock                                        Kate Comstock

            /                \                                          /                             \

Edith Carr  --  Philip Ammon            Elvira Carney  --  Robert Comstock


Edith Carr, the neurotic socialite, and Elvira Carney, the adulterous desire object, are the "other" women in relation to Elnora and Kate Comstock respectively.  The progressive idealization of Elnora as a type of naturalist Angel of the House, who [uneasily] embodies the opposition between the (positive) economic value and (negative) life-threatening danger aspects of the Limberlost swamp, promises to neutralize the respective desire threats that the other two women just as uneasily embody (Edith Carr = enervating economic overinvestment; Elvira Carney = punishing adulterous desire).  Elnora's uneasy embodiment of this specific opposition, together with the signifying volatility of "E__ C__," emerges at the beginning of the novel when "Comstock" morphs into "Cornstock" and thereafter "Cornstalk" (see Response 2).  Thus "E__ C__" can be read as a metonymic signifier cluster for a complicating (and implicating) desire that underlies A Girl in the Limberlost.

It can be speculated that James Joyce was familiar with A Girl in the Limberlost whose publication year predates his own bildungsroman novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by approximately five years.  Throughout A Portrait (and especially in Chapter 2) "E__ C__" functions as the signifier cluster for Stephen's romanticized adolescent desire for the elusive E[mma] C[leary] that generates the intense ambivalence, ironically driving him to the Nighttown prostitute's threshold.  Thus it would be no surprise if Joyce's "E__ C__" were just as intentional as Stratton-Porter's, especially considering that Joyce and Stratton-Porter were contemporaries.         

 

     

Don't Humans Adapt Too?

For my last post of the semester, I have more of a question than a post.  Having read and written a little bit on Silent Spring this week, I'm not sure what to do with what seems like an innocuous, but potentially big, question regarding Carson's argument.  To me, it seems she's stating that one reason synthetic pesticides and the like should be strictly regulated, if not banned and destroyed right now, is because poisons "accummulate in the tisssues" and "alter" the "heredity" (8) of living creatures, and in the case of some very adaptable species of insects, this can lead to super-species coming back with a better-equipped immune system and terrorizing us more effectively.  I also get how this creates a demand for the production of even more lethal poisons.  But, this is my question, wouldn't humans adapt to the toxic poisons too?  I mean, shouldn't we be hoping we can adapt, and have adapted, to these poisons?  If insects can and do adapt to these poisons and come back stronger than ever, why can't and don't humans too?  Maybe this is how X-men and -women come into being.  (I'm kidding in that last sentence but, who knows, it could actually lead to a fun and interesting project.)  No, really, I wonder:  if insects adapt to insecticides and pesticides, don't humans adapt too?  And if so, doesn't that potentially lessen or dampen their risk?       

Reading Nature

           As I am working on my final project theorizing on reading and nature, I was intrigued by Carson’s textual characterization of the environment in Silent Spring.  My project orbits around Thoreau’s approach to reading; he advocates a model of reading that restores immediacy to experiencing nature.  Nature is not a book to thumb through, but Thoreau asserts we can access nature by being deliberate readers.  The act of reading offers us the training we need to deconstruct the screen between our civilized world and nature.  As Thoreau says, “No method or discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.  What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?  Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?”  (74-5).  Reading is the means to connecting to nature.  It should not be an endpoint.

Carson makes similar claims about reading as an action that brings us closer to our surroundings, but in Silent Spring, nature is what we can, and must, read.  She employs her “us vs. them” technique to identify “us” as the readers, the audience of what “they” write.  The authors (scientists, politicians, CEOs, etc.) write through their actions, recording “new chapters” onto each countryside they help alter (85).  Each natural setting is thus imbued with significance, but just like an unopened book is an inconsequential object, so, too, is nature something that requires readers in order to create a meaning-making ecology.  As Caron articulates, “the natural landscape is eloquent of the interplay of forces that have created it. It is spread before us like the pages of an open book in which we can read why the land is what it is, and why we should preserve its integrity.  But the pages lie unread” (64).  Silent Spring urges us never to stop humbly reading what nature has to say.  Carson wrote her book at a time when it seemed most people had finished reading nature, preferring the Cliff Notes versions to the uncensored wild editions of the past.  Silent Spring is her attempt to perform Thoreau’s definition of reading as a tool to get us nearer to nature.

Carson, Rachel.  Silent Spring.  1962.  Introd. Linda Lear.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Thoreau, Henry David.  Walden.  1854.  Ed. Owen Thomas.  New York, NY: Norton, 1966. 

Appointment Schedule as of 4/22

Conferences in the Lilly,

 It’s possible that on rare occasions I might be a few minutes late for a scheduled meeting, although I will try to do everything I can to avoid it and will email you if I am running late.  If none of these times works, I am also available during some evenings—just let me know.

Friday, April 19

10:00-11:00   Alicia Scott

11:00-12:00  Jessica George

12:00-1:00     Ava Dickerson

Monday, April 22

9:00-10:00

10:00-11:00

3:00-4:00  Anjona Ghosh

4:00-5:00

Tuesday. April 23

11:30-12:30  Morgan Burris

2:30-3:30  Audrey Snider

3:30-4:30  Deborra Sanders

4:30-5:30  Elizabeth Pappas

Wednesday, April 24

9:30-10:30 Bernadette Patino

10:30-11:30  Aaron Denton

11:30-12:30
12:30-1:25 Travis Shaw

3:00-4:00  Erika Jenns

4:00-5:00  Ly Nguyen

5:00-5:45

Thursday, April 25

9:00-10:00

10:00-11:00   Michelle Gottschlich

1:00-2:00   Mary Bowden

2:00-2:30

4:00-5:00  Steven Whyte

5:00-5:45  Hiromi Yoshida

Friday, April 26

9:00-10:00

10:00-11:00  Megan Jones

11:00-12:00 Brooke Opel

12:00-1:00    Ariel Hunt

More conference times will be made available during the final week.

Forcing Vision

I found Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring both interesting and easy to follow.  I was struck by the tension between the pleasing accessibility of the prose and the constant indictment of humankind.  The book seemed crafted to draw as varied a readership as possible.  In the Author’s Note, Carson says,

I have not wished to burden the text with footnotes but I realize that many of my readers will wish to pursue some of the subjects discussed.  I have therefore included a list of my principal sources of information, arranged by chapter and page, in an appendix which will be found at the back of the book.

The extensive research (all 54 pages of sources!) is kept tidily in the back, as not to deter the general public.  Carson’s book is also aesthetically appealing, with each chapter graced by black and white sketches.  The organization and presentation work symbiotically with Carson’s examples of nature, creating a narrative almost uncomfortably understandable. 

            The efforts to force the reader to comprehend begin immediately in the first chapter, “A Fable for Tomorrow.”  These few pages image an idyllic scene in nature before launching into the grim outcome of “a strange blight” (2).  Here, Carson outlines the main environmental changes that she explains later.  This rhetorical inventory works to implicate the readers; if you, too, have noticed “a strange stillness” for lack of birds, or neighbors’ farms experiencing “mysterious maladies” (2), you will be more likely to submit to the text’s authority. 

            Throughout the narrative, Carson chips away at the blinders we have maintained in both witnessing and participating in humankind’s dictatorship over nature; these blinders essentially render violence to nature permissible.  Unlike Mary Austin, Carson makes the strange familiar, even while mostly discussing the microscopic, the subsurface, the seemingly inconsequential.  She preys on urban and suburban anxieties, illustrating the aesthetic damages we have wrought through chemicals.  An example of this narrative strategy occurs in “Earth’s Green Mantle,” in which she takes us to our roadsides.  Once attractive to tourists, much roadside vegetation was subjected to chemical sprays.  This regiment turned the roadsides into a scorched, apocalyptic version of taking the scenic route – “a sight to be endured” (71).  Carson points to the disappearance of nature’s delights, hinting at the former glories of birdwatching, recreation, lounging, etc. to activate the average person’s sympathy for nature’s future.  Her technique is consciousness-raising at its most grounded execution.

Carson, Rachel.  Silent Spring.  1962.  Introd. Linda Lear.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2002

Rachel Carson (Biography and Reading Lists)

Rachel Carson

(27 May 1907 – 14 April 1964)

                                                          

Rachel Carson’s yearbook portrait (1928, photographer unknown)

1907  b. 27 May (Rachel Louise Carson) on a small family farm near Springdale, PA.  Daughter of Robert Warden Carson (insurance salesman) and Maria Frazier (McLean) Carson. 

1925  Graduated high school in Parnassus, PA at the top of her class of 45 students.

1929  Pennsylvania College for Women (Chatham University), A.B.  Originally majored in English, but switched to biology.  Continued to contribute to the school’s student newspaper and literary supplement.  Graduated magna cum laude.

1932  Studied genetics at Johns Hopkins University.  Awarded A.M. in biology.

1935  Robert Warden Carson died.  His sudden death left Rachel Carson with the care of her aging mother, and added to financial difficulties that prevented her from studying for a doctorate.

1936  Becomes the second woman hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time professional position (junior aquatic biologist).

1937  (January)  Carson’s older sister died, leaving her with the additional care of her two nieces. Under the Sea-Wind (first book) published in the Atlantic.

1949  Appointed chief editor of publications for the Fish and Wildlife Service (formerly Bureau of

Fisheries).

1952  The Sea Around Us won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the Burroughs Medal.  It remained on the New York Times Best Seller List for 86 weeks.  The book’s success resulted in two honorary doctorates for Carson, and enabled her to leave her job to focus on writing full-time.

1953  The film based on The Sea Around Us won an Oscar for Best Documentary although Carson was unhappy with the final version produced by Irwin Allen.

(July) Met Dorothy Freeman, with whom she shared an exceptionally close friendship.

1955  Completed the final book of the trilogy The Edge of the Sea.

1957  One of Carson’s nieces died at the age of 31, leaving her with the care of  Roger Christie, a 5-

year-old orphan son.

1962  (27 September)  Silent Spring published by Houghton Mifflin.  Became Book-of-the Month

for October 1962.

1964  (14 April)  Carson died at the age of 56, Silver Spring MD--cause of death: breast cancer.

 

Interesting Facts:

• As a child (age 8-11), Carson enjoyed the novels of Gene Stratton-Porter, and in her teen years,

those of Herman Melville.

• Silent Spring sold over 500,000 hardcover copies.

• The controversial book generated intense public concern, and caused President John F. Kennedy to

announce a federal investigation into the problem of mass pesticide use.  The report of the President's

Science Advisory Committee (issued May 1963) endorsed the basic premise of Silent Spring by

“warning against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and urging stricter controls and more research”

(Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004).

• Al Gore wrote the introduction to the 1994 edition of Silent Spring.

 

Writings by Rachel Carson:

BOOKS

• Under the Sea-Wind; A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941; corrected edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1952; London: Staples, 1952).
• Food from Home Waters . . . Fishes of the Middle West (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943).
• Food from the Sea: Fish and Shellfish of New England, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Bulletin, no. 33 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943).
• Fish and Shellfish of the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944).
• Chincoteague: A National Wildlife Refuge (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
• Mattamuskeet: A National Wildlife Refuge (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
• Guarding Our Wildlife Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Conservation in Action, no. 5 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948).
• Bear River: A National Wildlife Refuge, text by Carson and Vanez T. Wilson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Conservation in Action, no. 8 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).
• The Sea Around Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951; London: Staples, 1952; revised and enlarged, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961).
• The Edge of the Sea (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955; London: Staples, 1956); chapter “The Rocky Shores” republished separately as The Rocky Coast, with photographs by Charles Pratt and illustrations by Robert Hines (New York: McCall, 1971).
• Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962; London: Hamilton, 1963).
• The Living Ocean: A Special Report (Chicago: Field, 1963).
• The Sense of Wonder (New York & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1965).
• Lost Woods: The Discovered Writings of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear (Boston: Beacon, 1998).

Collection

• The Sea (London: McGibbon & Kee, 1964)--comprises Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea.

PRODUCED SCRIPT

• “Something About the Sky,” television, Omnibus, CBS, 11 March 1956.

OTHER

• “Odyssey of the Eels,” in The Book of Naturalists, edited by William Beebe (New York: Knopf, 1944), pp. 478-495.
• Claude Debussy, La Mer, NBC Symphony, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, jacket notes by Carson, RCA, 1951.
• “To Understand Biology,” in Humane Biology Projects (New York: Animal Welfare Institute, 1960).
• Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry, foreword by Carson (London: Stuart, 1964).

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS--UNCOLLECTED

• “It'll be Shad Time Soon,” Baltimore Sunday Sun, 1 March 1936.
• “Undersea,” Atlantic Monthly, 160 (September 1937): 322-325.
• “The Bat Knew It First,” Collier's (18 November 1944): 24.
• “The Birth of an Island,” Yale Review, 40, no. 1 (September 1950): 112-126.
• “Wealth from the Salt Seas,” Science Digest, 28 (October 1950): 321-329.
• “Mr. Day's Dismissal,” Washington Post, 22 April 1953, p. A26.
• “Our Ever-Changing Shore,” Holiday, 24 (July 1958): 71-120.
• “Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics,” Audubon, 65 (September/October 1963): 262-265, 313-315.

LETTERS

• Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman 1952-1964, edited by Martha Freeman, introduction by Paul Brooks (Boston: Beacon, 1995).

PAPERS

·         Collections of Rachel Carson documents are held by the Rachel Carson Council in Chevy Chase MD and in the Rachel Carson Collection at the Beinicke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

 

BIOGRAPHIES

• Brooks, Paul, The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, Houghton Mifflin (Boston), 1972.
• Meiners, Roger E., et al., eds.  Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson, Cato Institute (Washington, D. C.), 2012.
• Lear, Linda, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Holt (New York), 1997.
• Levine, Ellen, Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life, Viking (New York), 2007.
• Souder, William, On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, 1^st edition, Crown Publishers (New York), 2012. 
• Sterling, Philip, Sea and Earth: The Life of Rachel Carson, Crowell (New York), 1970.

    Fig. 1  American robins killed by DDT as shown in Michigan State

               University research in 1961 (Introduction to Ornithology,

               3^rd ed., 1975).

 

    Fig. 2  The U.S. Army uses DDT to end the typhus epidemic in Naples (January 1944).

 

Biographical Source for Hand-Out

Literature Resource Center.  Gale Cengage Learning.  Accessed 15 Apr. 2013.