ABSTRACT
The key to understanding this extract lies in knowing that the granular white powder was agricultural pesticide and that, although Rachel Carson was describing a hypothetical situation, all the individual elements had ‘actually happened somewhere’ (Carson, 1963, 22). Carson had become increasingly concerned about the arbitrary use of farm pesticides, particularly DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), for their indiscriminate effects on wildlife. In the late 1950s, several American states had used DDT in widespread aerial spraying programmes aimed at pest control. Her book, which had the original working title The Control of Nature, appeared against the background of that programme and other instances of pesticide misuse (Payne, 1996, 142). Yet rather than being a straightforward academic counter-argument to the case for using agricultural pesticides, Carson created a powerful and easily understood vision of the potentially devastating
consequences of uncontrolled usage. In the words of Stewart Udall, US Secretary of the Interior between 1961 and 1968, Silent Spring was ‘an ecology primer for millions’ and played an inestimable part in ‘the ecological reawakening of America’ (Udall, 1963, 137; Payne, 1996, 137).
