How to Poison the Earth is a nonfictional piece of satire by Linnea Saukko. It reminds me a lot of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, because both deal with environmental pollution. However, the major difference between them is that Saukko's is extremely satirical. Saukko jumps right in to her topic from the start. Even her beginning sentence is satirical and immediately alerts the audience that her passage is satirical. She uses personification in the first sentence as she writes that the earth is constantly trying to cleanse itself. This grabs the audience's attention. Saukko's speaker then goes on to explain how to poison the earth, and in doing so details all of the practices that we are currently doing. This informs the audience that our current practices are in fact very harmful to the earth.
Saukko includes an abundance of facts about the practices that poison earth. She includes very details facts about specific chemicals. Ironically, she cites the Environmental Protection Agency as one of her sources of information. This is ironic because the EPA's job is to protect the earth and combat harmful things like pollution and toxic waste. The passage has an extremely pedantic tone as the speaker lays out instructions on different processes that will poison earth. The speaker has a very positive tone towards earth poisoning, while the author has a negative tone towards it. While the narrator is very formal, they explain everything in a very easy to understand manner. This leads me to believe that the author's intended audience is not just those who are well educated on environmental pollution, but also those who don't have a lot of knowledge on it. She most likely did this so others would be more aware that many of the things humans do have harmful effects on earth.
Works Cited:
Saukko, Linnea. "How to Poison the Earth." Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
Saukko includes an abundance of facts about the practices that poison earth. She includes very details facts about specific chemicals. Ironically, she cites the Environmental Protection Agency as one of her sources of information. This is ironic because the EPA's job is to protect the earth and combat harmful things like pollution and toxic waste. The passage has an extremely pedantic tone as the speaker lays out instructions on different processes that will poison earth. The speaker has a very positive tone towards earth poisoning, while the author has a negative tone towards it. While the narrator is very formal, they explain everything in a very easy to understand manner. This leads me to believe that the author's intended audience is not just those who are well educated on environmental pollution, but also those who don't have a lot of knowledge on it. She most likely did this so others would be more aware that many of the things humans do have harmful effects on earth.
Works Cited:
Saukko, Linnea. "How to Poison the Earth." Web. 10 Dec. 2015.