And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Silent Spring (review)

And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Silent Spring. Ed. Craig Waddell. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000; pp. ix + 232. $50.00.

As students of language, we are continually amazed and excited by those unique pieces of rhetoric that speak to the hearts and minds of the community in monumental ways. We repeatedly probe texts such as Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" or Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" to uncover what particular combination of rhetorical qualities contributes to their impact. Although widely recognized as the book that ignited America's environmental consciousness, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is often overlooked by rhetorical scholars. According to Craig Waddell, such critical inattention to "Silent Spring's phenomenal impact on public deliberation about the environment" (3) is the reason for the publication of And No Birds Sing. This new ensemble of rhetorical analyses is a well-organized, insightful read for individuals with either rhetorical or environmental interests. Its chapters demonstrate a wide range of critical stances and offer numerous conclusions that contribute much to our understanding of Silent Spring.

In the first chapter, editor Waddell sets the stage with a brief overview of Carson's life. Waddell also contemplates reasons for the book's tremendous impact and, through a thematic analysis of reviewers' reactions, dispels scholarly hypotheses that Carson's success lay either solely in her ability to articulate an apocalyptic vision, or in her ability to ally her concerns with the spirit of the times. Instead, he forwards that "no one factor—either within or outside the text—can adequately explain the success of Silent Spring" (11). This thesis unites the variety of analyses that follow.

In chapter 2, Ralph H. Lutts's attempt to embed Carson's discourse within the public vocabulary of 1962 America logically flows from Waddell's initial contextual description. Lutts explores connections between the "years of debate about nuclear weapons and fallout" (34) and Carson's discussion of the "hazards of pesticides" (34). From this connection, Lutts attributes Carson's success to her ability to tap into public anxiety over the dangers of fallout and direct it toward pesticides.

Christine Oravec's examination of what many believe to be at the "very center of the controversies surrounding the book" (43), "A Fable for Tomorrow" in chapter 3, acts as a smooth transition to an internal textual focus. Through a critical stance fusing Foucault's concept of archeology with a traditional exploration of the author's inventional process, Oravec considers whether Carson chose "the most effective means of persuasion in this case" (43). By tracing "the persuasive directions taken by an early, leading environmental writer"(44), Oravec concludes that Carson strategically fictionalized factual evidence in a strategy of mythic storytelling "to engage her readers and heighten their concerns" (46).

Continuing to echo Silent Spring's chronological development, in chapter 4 Edward Corbett considers Carson's next chapter, "The Obligation to Endure," in light of deliberative inventional topics. Corbett concludes that Carson's discourse "relies heavily on . . . advantageous and . . . disadvantageous" arguments "to sway us away from our present practices, . . . to persuade us that those practices are disadvantageous, that they are detrimental to the well-being of society, and that the practices she advocates are advantageous, that they will mitigate or eliminate the detrimental effects of our present policy" (65).

Moving to a consideration of the work as a rhetorical whole, in chapter 5 Tarla Rai Peterson and Markus J. Peterson explore the impact of Carson's redefinition of progress on contemporary ecology and environmental science textbooks. Peterson and Peterson argue that the terministic screen of progress Carson develops acts as an "analytic frame for discovering aspects of our social contract that need revisiting . . . and. . . invites readers to begin that project" (98). By locating its traces, particularly "the claim that the warrior mentality . . . is unhealthy for humans" (73), in the vocabulary of ecological and environmental science books, the researchers demonstrate the authors...