Blog 5 option 4

Blog 5 Option 4

 

The apocalypse trope used in many environmental issues today can be good and bad. When you use the rhetorical strategy of apocalypse you can come off very different than the way you meant to. In a good scenario your audience will be shocked and become inspired to change their ways of thinking and doing. They feel that they can help stop the end of the world by changing the things they do. This unfortunately does not work with a lot of people that can be repulsed by your action of saying the world is going to end.  To them you will look like a crazy homeless man on the side of the road with a cardboard sign saying “THE WORLD IS GOING TO END! REPENT.” I know if I saw a man on the side of the road telling me this I would make sure I did not walk near to them so I don’t catch the crazies or have them bother me with their illogical ranting. This makes me think those environmentalists need to be careful how they have people view them because once your labeled crazy, no one will believe anything you say.  So the use of apocalypse should be limited. Looking at Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring she says on page 7 “they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories” you get the sense that what we make is something like Dr. Frankenstein.  A person can take this and say we are not like some mad scientist creating abominations we are trying to create solutions to the problem of pest in our crops.  You lose credibility in your argument and lose the interest of your audience. Carson also says on page 12 “We allow chemical death rain to fall.”  How can one take it to heart when they hear some facts and then are laden with these imagines of death to come?

 

Works cited

Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston: Mariner, 2002. Print.

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Rhetorical Analysis of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson uses the apocalypse trope, logos, and ethos to grab the general public’s attention and to inspire the necessity for changing the way the environment is treated by mankind.

The apocalypse trope is implored right from the beginning before Carson even starts writing. She dedicates the book to Albert Schweitzer who said, “Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.” This quote gets the reader thinking before they have even turned to page one. In Ecocriticism, Thompson writes that in the apocalypse trope “violent and grotesque images are juxtaposed with glimpses of a world transformed” (Garrard 86). Silent Spring fits into this definition. Carson starts by writing about a picturesque farming town in the middle of America with a beautiful landscape filled with foxes, deer, trout, healthy farm animals, and a variety of birds. She then compares this to the same town in which “everywhere was a shadow of death” and there was a “strange stillness” that had fallen (Carson 2). Garrard writes “apocalypticism is inevitably bound up with imagination, because it has yet to come into being (86). Carson writes about a town that “does not actually exist” but “this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know” (3).

Carson uses logos many times throughout the Silent Spring excerpt. In Part 2: The Obligation to Endure, many evolutionary and scientific facts are given to the reader in order to display the impacts of mankind on the environment. Carson writes “it took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth” and that “time is the essential ingredient” needed in order to achieve balance on the earth, but “in the modern world there is no time” (6). Carson writes so the general public can understand what is happening to the earth and that the only way to stop the damaging of the earth is for us to stop asking Mother Nature to adjust to the “synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind” (7). She plays on the logic of anthropogenic changes being made to the environment. Instead of praising agricultural innovation as many people do, she paints the large-scale agriculture as something that should be obviously known to not work in terms of insect devastation. When discussing the single-crop farming of immense acreage of wheat, she writes “obviously then, an insect that lives on wheat can build up its population to much higher levels on a farm devoted to wheat than on one win which wheat is intermingled with other crops to which that insect is not adapted” (Caron 10).

Carson implores the use of ethos in Silent Spring by painting the treatment of the environment in the light of right and wrong. Carson writes in Part I: A Fable for Tomorrow about an “evil spell” ruined the beautiful town in the middle of America (2). She then goes on to write “No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves” (Carson 3). In this passage she is describing the way that the people of this town had treated their land and by writing that it was not witchcraft or enemy action that had caused the devastation, she is showing that it is wrong and evil to abuse the land.

Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston: Mariner, 2002. Print.

Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

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Blog 5, “Silent Spring” Debate

“Apocalypticism is inevitably bound up with imagination, because it has yet to come into being” (Garrard 86). This aspect of apocalypse is put to use immediately in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. She begins the novel with a description of the world we will soon know, including vivid images of death and illness, if we do not change the path we are on. Carson notes that “every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them” (Carson 3). It seems to me that apocalypse functions mainly as a scare tactic in the hopes of opening the reader’s eyes to the potential future we are heading towards. The fact that these “misfortunes” (Carson 3) have already happened is a wake up call, but by saying all of them could transpire around the world is simply frightening. Carson “immerses the reader in the impending blighted world…whilst holding out the possibility of ‘the other road’” (Garrard 95). Hope is not yet lost; if we change the way we treat and use the environment we can avoid an apocalyptic end.

It seems to me that Carson’s main issue with people today is that many will blindly listen to what they are told by “professionals” without considering that what they are told may just be one viewpoint, not necessarily supported by others. She indicates that we are not doomed to this bleak future as long as we make some changes in our lifestyles. The use of pesticides and fertilizers is believed by many to be our only option in maintaining food supplies, but actually “there are many [alternatives] and our ingenuity could soon discover many more if given opportunity” (Carson 12). As humans, we are contributing to the dire state of the world, disrupting the ecosystem, but we also have the potential to resolve it. All we need to do is “decide whether [we wish] to continue on the present road, and [we] can do so only when in full possession of the facts” (Carson 13).

 

Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston: Mariner, 2002. Print.

Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

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Blog 5 / Option #1 Silent Spring “offers little hope that catastrophe may be averted”

According to Greg Garrard, Buell argues that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring “offers little hope that catastrophe may be averted because the threat [outlined] is so pervasive and irreversible” (Garrard 95). Carson refers to human impact upon the environment as “man’s assaults,” denoting nature as a victim of “the chain of evil” (Carson 6). The crime against the environment, this “now universal contamination,” has already been committed and the damage done is “for the most part irrecoverable,” and “irreversible” (Carson 6). Making matters worse is the ignorance of mankind, as Carson points out: “[French theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary] Albert Schweitzer once said: “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation” (Carson 6). The first step for solving a problem, is recognizing it in the first place, so the fact that she views man as a blind assaulter leaves little hope that anything can still be done to avert an apocalyptic disaster.

Then, Carson attempts to offer a more hopeful view, giving power to the environment rather than having it seem like a defenseless quarry. She mentions that “the environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting,” so this is not the first time that mother nature has had to endure abuse from its surroundings (Carson 6). Life is equipped with the ability to adapt to any situation as Carson states “giving time – time not in years but in millennia – life adjusts, and a balance has been reached” (Carson 6). But that’s the catch – life has evolved and changed throughout earth’s history along with its changing climate and landscapes, but, the successful adaptions of plants and animals to these changing times has taken millions and billions of years (as have these changes). Therefore “time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time” (Carson 6). The blind ignorance and our lack of time seemed to extinguish any hope that “the chain evil” cause by “man’s war against nature” could ever be reversed (Carson 6 &7).

Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston: Mariner, 2002. Print.

Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

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Blog 5: Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb

Paul Ehrlich’s, The Population Bomb, stresses the possibility of an apocalyptic environmental crisis, overpopulation. He argues, “that there was no emergency greater than the exponential increase in human numbers” (Ehrlich 434). Ehrlich develops his argument to set up a sort of environmental apocalyptic crisis where food scarcity and limited living space will put detrimental constrains on the natural world.  To develop his argument he persuades the reader using rhetorical devices like ethos, pathos, logos, and further challenges the reader to envision an overpopulated Earth.

The introduction serves to develop Ehrlich’s credibility with his “… original scientific works which won him many prizes [analyzing human population]” (Ehrlich 434). Although the introduction informs the reader that Ehrlich is passionate and very knowledgeable about human population he still lacks statistical evidence to support his argument.  He describes his visit to India, which provides him with some credibility in depicting possible consequences of overly populous areas. India is an overpopulated country where living conditions continuously dwindle as the population increases.  Ehrlich describes his visit to a crowded slum and its chaotic mess of people, calming, “… since that night I’ve known the feel of overpopulation”(Ehrlich 434). This seems a bit exaggerated since he only visited India and didn’t live there to really ‘feel’ the consequences of overpopulation but merely encountered them.

The Population Bomb’s intended audience was Americans, who essentially have never encountered or experienced the repercussions of overly populous environments. Using the analogy of India, Ehrlich also enables to reader to “realize that the undeveloped countries of the world face an inevitable population-food crisis” (Ehrlich 435).  He provides the reader with pathos and ethos exemplifying a estrange environment. Ehrlich also provokes fear by dramatizing the chaotic mess of “people, people, people, people” (Ehrlich 434). Ehrlich uses pathos through his use of hyperbole emphasizing and embellishing the population crisis appealing to the reader’s emotions.

Ehrlich also uses the rhetorical strategy, logos, in developing his argument. He logically explains how population increases exponentially without citing various statistics. “After all, no matter how you see it, population is a number game” (Ehrlich 435). He concludes his argument changing his former serious tone with sarcasm. In a ridicule manner Ehrlich comments about the benefits of overpopulation; having more people with more talent means, “entertainment on the worldwide TV should be excellent, for at any time, one could expect some ten million Shakespeares and rather more Beatles to be alive” (Ehrlich 436).

In brief, even though Ehrlich’s strategies appear effective Garrard points out “ [that the] long term dangers this approach poses for environmentalists causes may outweigh its rhetorical usefulness” (99 Garrard). Garrard is implying that stressing how soon the crisis will happen serves to later discredit Ehrlich because the timeline is essentially ambiguous.  Also, Ehrlich’s alarmist tone and tentative predictions stressed the upcoming crisis but didn’t supply the reader with any plausible solutions. He seems to encourage a proactive change but does not explain how. It leaves the reader with simply the awareness of an environmental crisis.

Works Cited

“American Earth: Environmental Writing since Thoreau.” Paul R. Ehrlich. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2008. Print.

Garrard, Greg. “Apocalypse.” Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

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