RACHEL CARSON: SILENT

SPRING

The fountainhead of the modern environmental movement

"The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth.  And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction.  It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science."

- Rachel Carson,

National Book Award Speech, 1963

A FABLE FOR TOMORROW

Fable (a literary genre): short, succinct fictional story usually including animals/plants/natural forces that are anthropomorphized and almost always ending in a moral lesson (the moral of the story).

SILENT SPRING: KEY LITERARY FOCI

Literary science / scientific literature To what ends does it use pastoral imagery? What

about its use ecological metaphors like web, interconnection, etc.?

Drawing from various genres: fable, jeremiad, anecdote, scientific paper, popular science

Drawing from various discourses that were already potent in society at that time (e.g. war metaphors borrowed from Cold War rhetoric) Apocalyptic mood

Apocalyptic fears of nuclear age: See pages 6, 8 Attack of the Crab Monsters (1952):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S68QJFheZaw

War rhetoric associated with cold war See page 7, “war against nature”

FOR THURSDAY Comments on course blog

Carson, Silent Spring, “The Other Road”

Monsanto, “A Desolate Year” (on course blog under “course documents”)

Sandra Steingraber, “The Fracking of Rachel Carson” (an audio slideshow – please watch entirety of slideshow; it is 9 minutes): http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/audio-video/item/audio_slide_show_the_fracking_of_rachel_carson/.

You can also read the article that accompanies the slideshow: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7005