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Carson's Rhetorical Questions

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1. Carson is asking a rhetorical question (p.376), not making an argument. The rhetorical question is a device intended to encourage thought, in this case about the proper apportionment of power in our society. The use of DDT and other insecticides has outcomes that go far beyond the immediate desired effect of the user, yet there is no specific cost attached to these externalities. Carson recognizes that such decisions are often made by small groups of people with narrow interests, and simply wants the reader to question whether such a system of stewardship for the world is ideal. Given that the audience is the majority of people who are not party to such decisions, the question is a fair one to ask, since it engages the audience to think about their role as complicit bystanders in actions such as the use of DDT. 2. Jacobs has a number of personal observations. One, from page 360, is "City air still makes free the runaways from company towns, from plantations, from factory farms, from subsistence farms, from migrant picker routes, from mining villages, from one-class suburbs." This observation comes in the context of her mention of a medieval adage "city air makes free', meaning that peasants in the countryside were bound by any number of things (laws, superstitions, slavery), none of which would bind a person in the city. Jacobs is observing that this is still the case today. She lived in New York when she wrote that book and would have made this observation there, living

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