Posted: February 17th, 2013
For this assignment, I want you to identify a particular persuasive strategy that Carson employs in Silent Spring and argue for or against the effectiveness of this particular strategy on her original audience, on contemporary readers, or on yourself as an individual reader. Your thesis might address why Carson’s argument worked so well with Americans in the early 1960s—a time when attitudes towards authority (and towards women scientists) were much different from those of today. But it might just as easily focus on why Carson successfully engages you (or fails to engage you) as an individual reader in 2013. That is, your thesis must include not only specific key ideas that pertain to elements of persuasion found in Silent Spring, it must also specify a particular audience as well. In addition to citing directly from Silent Spring, you must cite a minimum of two additional sources; those sources might be found on your own or they might be from materials made available to the entire class.
Imagine that you have been asked to contribute an article in a collection of student essays titled 50 Years After: College Students’ Perspectives on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The editor has asked you to keep the length to between 1400 and 1800 words. You will need to include a Works Cited page. Assume that your readers have not read Carson’s Silent Spring, but avoid unnecessarily long summary.
Place an order in 3 easy steps. Takes less than 5 mins.