Why does rachel carson begin with "there once was a town...", as though she were writing a fairy tale? Is this a fairy tale of sorts?

Question

From ch.12 The Environment - The language of composition

Answer 1

Yes, for you it may be a fairy tale, but when I read it in college, I realized she was talking about a future time when there would be no sounds of birds or insects, because they would have been poisoned, left the area, or become extinct.

Then she laid out all the logic about how we are damaging our natural environment with our wastes and pollution.

Yes, it was a view of the future, and not all fairy tales are based on happy events, more often than not, they are stories about horrible events and softened for children.

Ring around the rosy (the plague), Hansel and Gretel (starvation), et.al.

Richard M., EIT, MRE

retired science and math teacher, environmental engineer