Environmentalism of the 1960s

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Logos in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Along with pathos and kairos Carson makes sure to appeal to logos as well. Strong logos is exemplified by facts and logic that influence the reader. Logos is used to make man evaluate how they are negatively affecting the environment. Throughout the book logos was used but even this excerpt it was predominant. The excerpt was primarily about the way our use of chemicals is killing the environment. "It took hundereds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth," it took a long time to create the homeostasis that existed in the world. This homeostasis is no longer present to get back to homeostasis "time is essential" however this is irrelevant because "in the modern world there is no time." If we do not make changes fast, our world could never be the same. She reasons with her audience, one of our biggest problems was we have "synthetic creation's" created in laboratories these creations have no place in nature and are affecting the balance. By not just appealing to ethos she connected to her audience that listens to fact and cold hard truths. Making this book having the most affect in peoples mind about the truths of our environment.

3 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 29, 2016 at 11:49 AM
After reading the except from Silent Spring I also thought the quote, "Since the mid-1940's over 200 basic chemicals have been creates," was an important statistic that you could have used in your analysis of logos. I think that you chose some good evidence to support your claim of logos, but I think there are many more statistics that you could have pulled from this except that would have made you analysis even clearer. I did like how you connected ethos, pathos, and logos all together.
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Civil Rights: Police BrutalitySeptember 30, 2016 at 8:59 PM
I like how you explained the way logos is appealed to in the book, and I do believe that facts and statistic such as the creation of 200 more chemicals, provide a great support for her point. I do believe that you can talk about more components of logo in her excerpt, such as educational tone, logic and research.
-Ruoping li
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Civil Rights: Police BrutalityOctober 2, 2016 at 7:51 AM
I think your analysis of logos was solid, and just like Ruoping and Michala statistics would have made the analysis stronger. However, i like how you are showing that statistics and facts aren't the only way to appeal to logos, detail can be enough. Since audiences tend to believe you more when you have statistics and facts to prove the statement, including them would have benefitted you.

-Nidhi Kalaria
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Critical Introduction

Hello reader and welcome to our blog, “Environmentalism of the 1960s”! We are a group of freshman College Park Scholars at The University of Maryland, and all highly interested in the environment and the various movements to protect it. The Environmentalist Movement of the 1960s was one of the especially big motions in our history, and of the time and therefore many works were produced pushing the environmentalist agenda. Two of these works, which we discuss more thoroughly in our blog, are the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and the song “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell. These two works differ greatly on the basis of presentation, syntax, general message, and more, however both support the same general stance that human’s need to protect and stop inflicting such excessive harm on the environment. Our blog explores how the differences in these works enable each author to form concrete arguments backing the Environmentalist movement. In Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” and Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, the ideas of the environmentalist movement are pushed onto the audience using strong figurative language in the former and concrete facts in the latter.

In “Big Yellow Taxi” figurative language, specifically imagery, plays an important role in expressing Mitchell’s opinions on the environmentalist movement. Using pleas such as “hey farmer farmer put away that DDT now. Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees please” Mitchell creates a visual imagery ‘ultimatum’ for her audience, showing what is being given up for relatively unimportant benefits. Silent Spring appeals to logos and utilizes research-based statistics to instill credibility into the argument presented. The work is flooded with facts which are intertwined with Carson’s opinions on those topics. The major arguments of both works is that a greater public concentration on conservation is needed, and that without this we will surely lose things that can never be replaced. They use stases of action making it clear that unless society changes its ways and evaluates its actions, this planet and all that was once good about it will be lost.

The Environmentalist movement is one that has gained steam throughout the years, yet still has been unable to find truly effective solutions. Finding these solutions has become more difficult as society has grown and industrialization has progressed. A major issue in the 1960s and 70s was the usage of a chemical pesticide, DDT, which is explained further in our blog and the two main works referenced in our blog. Although DDT use is now largely banned, other, debatably worse, problems have presented themselves. We move closer and closer to these issues causing irreversible damage, making it clear just how essential modern environmentalist thought is. For example, air pollution is the world’s number one preventable cause of death, lending credence to the idea that the Environmentalist movement has much further to go before finding true success. With help from activists such as Mitchell and Carson and their works, this movement is able to progress and continue spreading awareness to the importance of protecting the environment.

After reading our blog, you will have gained a better understanding of this movement as a whole, and two influential pieces that supported the movement. We do not have a perfectly ordered approach, as we felt that a more piecemeal approach allows the topic to blend more efficiently and organically, with less of didactic nature. We prove our major arguments by thoroughly examining all the stases and rhetorical appeals from several angles and applying them to both texts with great efficiency and care. We hope you will appreciate the consequences of carelessness in the environment and the true impact mankind has on this one environment we have been given. A feeling that mankind is to blame for many issues should not be a rare feeling, and yet this should also be coupled with hope that we have time to fix it. Have fun reading and learning how together we can all conserve this planet!