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