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.