silent spring
AP language and composition free response question 1 In the passage from “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson, she portrays her strong emotions about American’s attitude towards the environment and the mindset obtained that it is justifiable to kill species because of an inconvenience they might cause. Carson is able to render that through rhetorical strategies such as exemplification, repetition, and cause and effect. Carson uses exemplification to help the reader understand her point on the pathetic mindset Americans have towards killing. She states “In southern Indiana, for example, a group of farmers went to together in the summer of 1959 to engage a spray plane to treat an area of river bottomland with parathion...” and continues by describing how thousands of black birds and starlings were killed as well as many other animals due to this poison. Carson uses this example to show the readers an incident where American farmers selfishly killed thousands of animals for their own benefit. She also uses another example and writes “In California orchards sprayed with this same parathion, workers handling foliage that had been treated a month earlier collapses and went into shock, and escaped death only through skilled medical attention.” She uses these two examples to make Americans aware that they are not only affecting animals and the environment, but also their own people. The author also employs the repetition of a multitude of questions to not only get the reader thinking but to emphasize how rarely the American people seem to ask these questions to themselves. She asks “Does Indiana still raise any boys who roam through the woods and fields and might even explore the margins of a river? Is so, who guarded the poisoned area to keep out any who might wander in, in misguides search for unspoiled natured?” This question most likely provoked many parent readers because she explained that curious children might stumble in the poison and result in an untimely