What did the author do well? What did the author do poorly?

One of the most effective parts of Silent Springis the fable that begins the book. Carson uses a fable of a mythical American town that is suddenly struck with a strange blight. She uses vivid and startling images, such as the following image of missing birds: "The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly." The fable presents the consequences of...

One of the most effective parts of Silent Spring is the fable that begins the book. Carson uses a fable of a mythical American town that is suddenly struck with a strange blight. She uses vivid and startling images, such as the following image of missing birds: "The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly." The fable presents the consequences of pesticides in startling and concrete terms that make the concept of the dangers of pesticides more accessible to readers. 

Carson did exhaustive research, but it could be argued that she could have even strengthened her argument by using her own personal story. Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1960, which then metastasized. She could have written about her own battle with this disease, which ended her life in 1964 (at age 56), two years after the publication of Silent Spring. Her work led to the creation of a presidential commission and to the eventual banning of DDT, a pesticide. Though it is difficult to determine the cause of an individual's cancer, she was around pesticides a great deal in her work as a biologist and, later, as a nature writer. One of the major arguments of her book is that pesticides cause cancer in humans, and she potentially could have illustrated that with her own story.