ID#: 119-00006 Year Level: 1st Term: First Semester

1. What is the title of the first chapter of the investigative book Silent spring?
Provide a brief summary of the chapter.

The Silent Spring that was written and authored by Rachel Carson is both
intriguing and educating. It was delivered with biblical imagery rather than using a
chemical jargon as it hopes to capture the taste of the general audience. The first
chapter of the book was titled “The Fable for Tomorrow”.

In the prologue, the author wants to illustrate the bewitching world homed with
various life forms including humans and animals. The introduction is straightforward and
it gives a lesson of causality—that everything is connected to everything else. She uses
the imagery of an ideal town that accurately reflects the American rural. The fields are
bountiful surrounded by verdant plantations and grains and the people are living in
utmost content. The “white clouds of bloom” signals the fertility and prosperity of the
landscape. However, those panoramic sceneries of nature were plagued by an
enigmatic paradox. The fine greenery setting turned into pale, brown fields where its
major livestock fails and the people begin to die alarmingly. The genesis of havoc was
not linked by a divine decree or an evil spell but rather instigated by the “white granular
powder” occupying the vast space of the atmosphere.

The white powder that was metaphorically defined by the author in the chapter is
seemingly the pesticides that was scientifically produced and utilized by humans in the
modern time. Carson implied also that spraying hazardous pesticides everywhere would
lead to a self-imposed catastrophic phenomenon to nature—treating the environment as
an enemy rather than a friend. It connotes that people will not, and cannot survive in this
finite world by destroying the essential and innate processes of nature. Once has been
annihilated, the equilibrium of the ecosystem is at risk, causing other forms of life to die
and eventually extinct. This is the primary concept of the environment and people
should care to know this menace in order to protect it from degradation, destruction, or
worst, from extermination.
 The main argument of the first chapter illustrates the dismal effects of the
emergence of pesticides in the community or the world in general. It describes how it
affects all life forms and the broader enigma it brings to societal and environmental
scales. It implies also that the main culprit of this problem is we—humans. Thus, she
tinted that supposed the nature exists for the convenience of man but it is indeed
alarming that the advent of science and technology has massively exploit to harm it and
to practice it against the earth. Moreover, her rhetorical views want to entail that though
nature is powerful but it is ironically fragile. Thus, it conceives that nature should not be
dominated but to be protected by humans and calls for humility and recognition of all life
forms rather than destruction.

It takes all of us to save all of us. The first chapter of the Silent Spring introduced
us to the problems of the world that were not given importance or profuse worth by
humans through the passing time. The menace brought by pesticide as illustrated in the
chapter is nothing but a silent villain that gradually and unconsciously kills us including
other communities and populations of living things in the environment. Thus, the fates of
man and nature are inextricably linked. Once nature is compromised, all of us will
certainly suffer from the gruesome aftermath.

2. Provide ample discussion of Rachel Carson’s main argument in her book Silent
Spring:

Through the art of literature, Rachel Carson has successfully translated scientific
jargons to a simpler spectacle of information to the broader audience. Her book is still
relevant in today’s generation untying the blindfold that keeps them ignorant from the
reality. Silent Spring simply means silent world—a once world perfect yet plagued by
the emergence of human scientific discoveries. The main theme of the book is the
destruction of the delicate balance of nature by the wholesale use of pesticides—
particularly those pesticides, including DDT, that were being administered via aerial
spraying in an attempt to control insect populations on a massive scale. In many
ways, Silent Spring served as a public warning, gathering expert opinion on the dangers
of this increasingly destructive practice. Carson, an environment advocate, carefully
explains what the balance of nature is. She describes the equilibrium of nature of the
soil, of the earth’s waters, and of the organisms of the earth. In an interrelated world,
she contends, man’s newfound power to change his environment needs to be wielded
with extreme caution if we are to avoid destroying the very systems that support us. She
also wanted to expose the false claims of the chemical industries that their pesticide
products were not harmful. To begin her project of public education, Carson outlines the
major families who patronize the use of pesticides and referred them as “biocides”
claiming that it effects are not solely for the insects but alternatively for humans per se.

Through extensive studies and researches, the author breakdowns the

questionable chemical contents of the pesticides and its effects to the different sections
of the natural world from water to soil, and from plants to birdlife. Despite lack of support
from the U.S. government, still, Carson managed to show impressive statistical
evidence, quoting from expert testimony that pesticides are much deadlier than what the
manufacturers is falsely advocating. Moreover, she revealed that spraying this man-
made pest regulator to farmlands and other economic landscapes are dangerous
because the chemicals inherited by vegetables, fruits and crops are likened as cancer-
causing foods to humans.

To conclude, she argues that pesticides are not only dangerous to the
environment and humans but reality testifies that its primary mission of controlling pests
has failed to realize. Worst, through using those chemicals, the ideal checks and
balances of nature have been disrupted. In addition, many insects are developing
resistance to new pesticides in a dangerously accelerating pattern resembling a resilient
race.

In light of this, problems will remain problems if substantial actions and solutions
are not applied to it. The only way forward, as the author suggests is to emulate
strategies that are inclined to natural and biological systems rather than chemical
controls such as identifying and deploying predators of pests in the environment. Given
all of the information she presents, Carson argues that the only prudent way forward is
to decline flamboyant, conceited pursuit of the ‘easy’ solution and simply return to the
‘road less traveled by,’ letting go of the conceit that nature only exists to serve the
interests of humanity.