Rachel Carson, a noted biologist, in an excerpt from her non-fiction book Silent Spring (1962), claims that airborne pesticides not only harm the animals they are meant to repel but also countless other life forms within the area. She supports her decision first by appealing to the audience's morals and sympathy towards death, and secondly through elaborate descriptions of the effect that the pesticides have on nature through effective diction and logical reasoning. Her purpose is to reveal the harms that these lethal chemicals have on nature and create awareness on the sensitive issue. Carson establishes her strong feelings for nature through a stern, direct tone to illustrate the importance of the issue to her audience of curious and environmentally uneducated citizens.
Carson initially begins constructing her argument through appealing to the audiences morals and emotions through speaking about death. She includes an alternative as to how farmers could have approached the situation differently to get the audience to support her argument, and then follows this with a statement that says, "... but the farmers had been persuaded of the merits of killing by poison, and so they sent in planes on their mission of death." Through this quote she connects with the audience's emotions through diction and figurative language. She refers to the planes with a military connotation, and through this the audience feels a sense of resentment towards those who had used these lethal chemicals. Carson also included an incident in which a human being had gotten severely injured although the pesticides were sprayed a month prior to contact. This appeals to the readers morals on the human level and may feel disturbed to hearing that these pesticides used to "eradicate" creatures may also severely harm or even kill a human being.
Secondly, she continues constructing her argument through elaborating the effects of pesticides have on nature by using effective diction and logical reasoning. Carson conveys the complexity of the issue when she provides the information that casualties exceeded some 65,000 blackbirds