Carson begins by describing how the use of these poisons is a solution to “’eradicat[e]’ any creature that may annoy or inconvenience us,” and then calls forward historical events of how in the summer of 1959 in southern Indiana, a group of farmers came together to “engage a spray plane to treat an area of river bottomland with parathion.” By recounting this incident with follow up information about how that area had been a “favored roosting site for thousands of blackbirds that…[fed] in nearby cornfields,” Carson appeals to the emotion of the reader by manipulating their thoughts to an instant feeling of remorse. This type of writing style is called pathos.
She continues to recount statistics of how many red-winged blackbirds and starlings had died due to these poisons, not including those that had not been recorded. Not only had she included pathos writing into her book, but logos as well, by providing backed up information for her argument. The use of these strategies invokes repulsion in the reader directed towards the deaths of so many innocent animals. It is at this point that Carson asks a rhetorical question—“And what of human beings?” Its use at the start of the third paragraph raises high concern for the well-being of the human race, further encouraging her audience to read on. She describes past incidents of the same pesticide, parathion, being used on Californian orchards and how it can kill humans, as well. She describes the awful event with powerful imagery, stating how those that had come in contact with the poison had “collapsed and went into shock” and merely “escaped death only through skilled medical attention.” Her focus to those little words that described so much had made an impact on the reader’s perspective on whether or not pesticides were safe or not.
And who does Rachel Carson put to blame for these mishaps? She has the audacity to question these choices. “Who has decided—who has the right to decide—for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight?” According to the last sentence of the passage, Carson justifies that the decision is of the “authoritarian[s] temporarily entrusted with power,” and have resolved an issue on their own out of pure selfish reasons.
With her strategies used to manipulate her reader’s emotions with logos and pathos, imagery, and rhetorical questions, Carson was able to effectively defend her view on the use of pesticides and poisons in natural settings. Not only had she done that, but she had also successfully put her blame on self-interested authority figures.
