Rachel Carson's Under the Sea-Wind: Science and Narrative

Introduction: Carson's First Book

Under the Sea-Wind is not Rachel Carson's best-known book — that distinction belongs to Silent Spring — but it is very well written and contains a wealth of solid environmental information. Many years before Jacques Cousteau began his televised explorations of the ocean's depths, Carson was already working through literature to awaken the public to the workings of Earth's fresh and salt waters, and to all the living creatures making their home in those waters.

Structure and Narrative Approach

Under the Sea-Wind uses descriptive narrative and real science to explain migrations, seasonal patterns, and how animals live and interact within their ecological homes. The work is divided into three separate books. Book I, "Edge of the Sea," opens with Carson naming a black skimmer "Rynchops." The reader is taken on the wings of Rynchops as the bird skims along an estuary and makes its rounds — an unusual approach, but an entertaining and creative one. The reader quickly grasps that Carson is firmly on the side of the natural world. In the second chapter of Book I, Carson introduces a species of sandpipers named Silverbar and Blackfoot, and follows the birds through their migratory pattern.

In Book II, "The Gull's Way," the central character is a mackerel named Scomber. The narrative follows Scomber's life, and along the way readers learn about all the creatures and organisms that live in the sea and on the shore — all presented in the context of the mackerel's experience. Book III, "River and Sea," takes the reader from a freshwater pond to the open sea and concentrates on the main character, "Anguilla" the eel. Throughout all three books, the natural-world characters introduced in each chapter interact with one another as they encounter the natural processes around them.

Carson's Purposes and Ecological Themes

Carson pursues several purposes simultaneously. First, she engages readers by transforming science into entertaining, easy-to-read narrative. Second, she points out the cruelty of precious natural creatures being killed needlessly when caught in fishing nets. Third, she educates readers about the migratory patterns of birds and fish. A fourth purpose, as Bernard Ouetchenbach writes in American Biologist (2007), is to achieve "a unity" within the ecology of oceans and freshwater dynamics — a unity grounded in Carson's skill at interweaving the book's sections and "cross-referencing" the birds and fish as they come into contact with one another.

By covering the migration of birds and fish, Ouetchenbach continues, Carson accomplishes her goal of introducing "freshwater ecology" that includes herons, ospreys, and raccoons. This technique, "along with the reiteration of descriptive circular motifs and ideas, gives the book coherence" (Ouetchenbach, 2007).

Throughout the work, Carson keeps the accuracy of the science entirely above reproach. She was, after all, a biologist who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, so she knew her subject well, and her passion for the natural world led her to share it at every opportunity. She does portray human beings as intruders — even invaders — into the natural world, though also as explorers. Even so, a reader senses that at this point in her career Carson still had faith that the sea could withstand human-caused disturbance.

Works Cited

Bratton, Susan Power. "Thinking Like a Mackerel: Rachel Carson's Under the Sea-Wind as a Source for a Trans-Ecotonal Sea Ethic." Ethics & the Environment, vol. 9, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–22.

Carson, Rachel. Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life. Oxford University Press, 1952.

New York Times. "A Dramatic Picture of Ocean Life." 1941. Retrieved 15 November 2009 from ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Ouetchenbach, Bernard. "Rachel Louise Carson, American Biologist." Twentieth-Century American Nature Writers: Prose, edited by Roger Thompson and J. Scott Bryson, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 274, 2007.