ABSTRACT
It is generally agreed that modern environmentalism begins with ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’, in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). Carson's fairy tale opens with the words, ‘There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings’ and, invoking the ancient tradition of the pastoral, goes on to paint a picture of ‘prosperous farms’, ‘green fields’, foxes barking in the hills, silent deer, ferns and wildflowers, ‘countless birds’ and trout lying in clear, cold streams, all delighted in by those who pass through the town (Carson 1999: 21). Concentrating on images of natural beauty and emphasising the ‘harmony’ of humanity and nature that ‘once’ existed, the fable at first presents us with a picture of essential changelessness, which human activity scarcely disturbs, and which the annual round of seasons only reinforces. However, pastoral peace rapidly gives way to catastrophic destruction:
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began tochange. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious 2 maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death.
