Silent Spring Book Evaluation

In the early sixties Rachel Carson wrote a nonfiction novel about the environment and the dangers of using pesticides. Silent Spring focused on the uncontrolled use of pesticides on nature and how unaware people were to the affects it had on animals, humans and the environment in general. This novel was a huge gain for the environmental community, it shined a light on the dangers the world was facing by using such harmful chemicals and it is considered a turning point.

Rachel Carson filled Silent Spring with a lot of research to have a strong point of all the negative facts of the use of chemicals.  This novel was definitely a lot of information to take in and process but the impact the novel has is so important. This novel personally hard for me to read because of all the research that was in the chapters. I understood the basic message Carson was trying to convey but someone who is not the best with environmental science it was a lot to take in while reading. I believe Carson made a strong point in her book and that the research definitely helped make her point, but I do not think it is a novel that is easy for people to read. Throughout the novel Carson describes all the negative facts of chemicals and at the end of the novel she mentions that “ ... if knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us.”(Carson 278). She brings up the point that if we as a society finally know of these dangerous chemicals then we should be more active to change the way we use them and come up with different ways to deal with the insects. Carson’s novel had such a huge impact of the world, in the afterword by Edward Wilson,  he states “ For the most part Americans listened and began to turn away from the wholesale toxic pollution. The Carson ethic spread to other countries and to other venues within each country. It is not possible exactly to assess the full influence of Silent Spring on American environmentalism.” Carson’s novel not only impacted America but other countries around the world, which just shows us how important this book was to the world. It opened up the dangers of the chemical that were being used on nature.

All in all Silent Spring was an important to read to understand the effects chemicals can have on the environment. I believe this book was important in the 1960’s and it is still important today. It definitely was a good read and people should read it to understand the importance of taking care of the environment.

Work Cited

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. 2002.