Monday, June 18, 2018

Rachel Carson, Not Silent

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was far more than a best seller. It was a cultural event that helped change the way we view technology, the application of science and potential long-term risks of new seemingly helpful products. Carson not only warned us that if we destroy the environment, we will destroy ourselves, she also taught us that there was a powerful short-term profit motive driving a lot of scientific research. She was not a radical who wanted us to give up modern conveniences. Carson thought we should look at what we were doing in a sober, rational way.

American Experience: Rachel Carson not only summarizes Carson’s most famous book and its impact, it also examines Carson’s life filled with triumphs and tragedies.

Carson, born in 1907, was a promising and ambitious student at a time when girls were expected to find a husband, have children and take care of the home. Her first love was writing, and when she went to college, she majored in English, but a trip to the ocean kindled a love for marine biology and she changed majors. She finished her masters in biology and began working on her PhD when her father died. It was up to her to support her mother and a couple of younger siblings. So she dropped out of school and started looking for a job.

Luckily, Carson found one that was well suited to her. She was hired on at the United States Fish Commission, which later was combined with other departments to form the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Carson was to read scientific studies, correlate the findings, and write papers and pamphlets for a general audience. The job combined her love for writing and her love of science.

Carson was able to support herself and her family, but she soon had the urge to reach a wider audience. She submitted science articles to popular magazines, and she eventually wrote a book, Under the Sea, published in 1941. World War II was getting underway, and the reading public wasn’t much interested in Carson’s book, so it sold less than 2,000 copies.

Ten years later, Carson published another book, The Sea Around Us. She feared the Cold War would undermine interest in her new book just as war had overshadowed her first effort. However, that turned out not to be the case. Some of the chapters were published in the New Yorker, and The Sea Around Us landed on the best seller list and stayed there for months. Under the Sea was then reprinted, and it, too, landed on the best seller list. Carson had two best sellers at the same time.

The royalties afforded Carson the ability to quite her job and focus her attention on writing books. She also bought a vacation home on Southport Island, Maine, a little cottage by the water so she could examine sea life more closely. Dorothy and Stanley Freeman were her neighbors on the island, and they became friends. Carson had never dated, never married and was not a social person. She was lonely, so the Freemans provided much needed companionship. Carson became especially close to Dorothy, and the two women began exchanging letters two and three times a week when Carson was not on the island. Many of them were basically love letters full of expressions of affection and tenderness.

There was another book in 1955, but then Carson was delivered some serious blows. The mother she had supported and lived with for decades died, and then a niece died at 30 from pneumonia leaving behind a five-year-old boy. Just when Carson was finally free from her role as caretaker, she had to take on the responsibility of another family member in need. Carson adopted the little boy. Carson worried she wouldn’t have the time or energy to write, but her concern about the use of DDT inspired her to keep working. However, just as she began writing Silent Spring, Carson was diagnosed with cancer. She was battling the disease all through the writing process, the publication and the subsequent media attention. She died in 1964, leaving her then 12-year-old grand nephew orphaned for a second time.

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