Environmentalism of the 1960s

Friday, September 30, 2016

Pathos in Silent Spring

Rachel Carson made sure to pay attention on logos and kairos but was heavy on pathos. Pathos is emotional appeal which for most people is very effective to persuade them toward a certain stance. Carson wanted to make a change in her readers by making them feel bad for these horrifying truths of our world and want them to make a change. Her purpose was to make us learn to coexist with nature instead of destroying it and to get people to understand her intent she use pathos. "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation." Carson makes sure we realize the common ignorance that man has, that we are destroying our beautiful earth with our own hands. This reminds me of picture with a similar message. Not understanding what we are doing we are destroying what created us. This picture encompasses a lot of the pathos of Silent Spring. "Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to the earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death." Carson provides a graphic image of how what we created is killing us slowly. "New forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure well." Our water used to be clean our vegetation used to be safe, and our livestock used to be healthy. These quotes among many others are clear representations of pathos within Silent Spring. Overall Carson's message she got to us is not only are we killing our environment, we are killing ourselves and a change needs to be made.

4 comments:

Civil Rights: Police BrutalitySeptember 30, 2016 at 8:51 PM
Your analysis of the pathos in Silent Spring reminds of the concept of Karma, which is the idea of a person's current and past action will directly impact or cause future events. Therefore, human's current careless littering of the environment will only cause more harm in the future.
-Ruoping Li
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UnknownSeptember 30, 2016 at 9:08 PM
I really agree with the authors approach to convincing and persuading the audience. It's necessary that man start to understand the damage we cause on the world around us, but I feel like there are always going to be a large group of people who "dont believe it until they see it". That is to say, they wont accept the damage we are doing until its very much done.

-Race Saunders
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Bryan HwangOctober 3, 2016 at 8:56 AM
I think your analysis of the shock factor is dead on, since the pathos of the argument is so strong. Guns represent death, and seeing one built on our "successes" is definitely a good representation of us killing our only benefactor.
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Civil Rights: Police BrutalityOctober 3, 2016 at 4:47 PM
I thought your analysis was good but one thing I have to point out is that you use quotes from the passage but don't embed them to your argument and it gets confusing. But I think that the picture you referenced to does a great job in emphasizing how mankind's creations will be the reason nature is destroyed.

~Kim Cerritos
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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!