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Most of us think of Aldous Huxley and his famous dystopian novel rather than Shakespeare when we hear the words “brave new world.” But to understand how the readings in this unit relate to the particular and peculiar American fear and fascination with how our New World might end, it might help to hold in mind both literary references as well as the saying “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”  The perception about the precipitating cause of the feared apocalypse is very different in these readings, but all three reveal a deep anxiety that we, ourselves, will bring about our undoing.

These readings are presented asynchronously, jumping back and forth in time, starting in 1920 with Robert Frost’s poem, Fire and Ice. Frost’s musing about how the world will end was inspired Dante’s Inferno—Frost uses Dante’s terza rhima rhyme scheme and the structure of the Inferno with its ranking of “hot” and “cold” sins. Allegedly, Frost wrote this poem after a discussion with an astronomer, Hadley Shapley. According to Shapley, Frost asked him how the world would end, and Shapley responded that either the sun will explode and incinerate the Earth, or the Earth will eventually freeze in deep space. It is therefore entirely possible, then, that Frost’s poem has roots in Early Modern Christianity (and Islam, for that matter) and 20th century science as well as Frost’s assessment of humankind’s destructive impulses.

Frost’s poem was written was before technology had unleashed the power of the atomic bomb, the possibility of a nuclear “winter,” and the looming peril of climate change; but as contemporary readers it is impossible  to not view the poem through these lenses.

The second reading jumps back to 1693 and the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Although it is a defense of the witch trials and a justification of “spectral evidence,” it was nevertheless written by one of the most brilliant and complex figures in Puritan New England—who was not even in attendance at the trials. Why would Cotton Mather, a member of the most respected scientific society of his day (the Royal Society, which still exists and is still prestigious) express the outrageous opinions he espouses—that the “outbreak” of witches in Salem is a dire threat to the existence of the colonies? And how do we reconcile the man who had his household inoculated against smallpox (a very science-forward practice) with the man who perceived the agents of Satan in the mass hysteria that grew out of the strange behaviors of a few pre-teen girls —actions possibly motivated by fear of their authoritarian fathers or the effects of rye ergot?

The answer is as complex as Mather, and some new research suggests that he might have been influenced in his perception by knowledge of shamanistic pagan practices in Scandinavia, where the ingestion of the fly agaric mushroom created hallucinogenic trances for religious purposes. It is possible that he thought a similar, pagan custom was being practiced in New England—and in Mather’s time paganism was synonymous with witchcraft. However, the core of Mather’s fear and the fear of other second generation Puritan leaders was that the great hope that the Puritans would establish a New Jerusalem in New England was fading away.  Puritan leader John Winthrop had promised that, if the Puritans dedicated themselves to true Christian charity and obedience to God, that they would become the embodiment of the “City on a Hill” and the light of the world mentioned by Christ in Matthew 5:14. In fact, they would inherit God’s covenant with the Israelites who had, according to Puritan doctrine, failed to fulfill its requirements.

But, as is often the case, the second and third generations of Puritans were less concerned—some might say less obsessed—with their spiritual lives. Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards were two brilliant and deeply committed theologians who tried to kindle devotion by any means they could—including fear. For Mather, the histrionic behaviors and accusations that led up to the Witch Trials were surely proof that, with just a bit more perseverance, the former “Devil’s Territories” could become the New Jerusalem it was intended to be. But the stakes were high—failure to root out the “knot” of witches would lead to further “infection and infestation” and “threaten[s] no less than a sort of a dissolution upon the world.”

Almost three hundred years later, Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring” in 1962, one of the earliest books to signal a warning that human beings were affecting important ecosystems by the widespread use of an insecticide—DDT. Because of its efficacy in eradicating “infestations”—killing mosquitos and other “undesirable” insects, DDT began to be used on a wide scale—planes dispersed it over farms and crops, trucks rumbled through suburbs with dust clouds (DDT is technically a solid) billowing out behind them. But DDT didn’t just kill mosquitos. It also poisoned birds and entire ecosystems. Rachel Carson was a Fish and Wildlife Service employee. Many owners of bird sanctuaries and The National Audubon Society were vehemently opposed to the indiscriminate spraying of DDT. Carson also did meticulous research, checking the findings of several scientists and even incorporating new medical evidence that pesticides were finding their way into the food chain and causing cancer. Although the book is not confined to the effects of pesticides on birds, the work’s title was inspired by lines from John Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” a poem set in a place where “The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.”

In his 2007 book, The gentle subversive : Rachel Carson, Silent spring, and the rise of the environmental movement, Mark Harmon Lyttle categorizes the opening passage of Silent Spring, “A Fable for Tomorrow,” as intended to provide a gentle introduction to a serious topic. This is the part of Silent Spring that you will read—remember that it is only a very small part of the book.

The chemical companies viewed Carson and her book as anything but a gentle warning. She was viciously derided by Monsanto and other chemical and pesticide companies. American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson’s analysis of DDT. According to White-Stevens, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

There is an important lesson here—in the story of Silent Spring and DDT, but also Mather—in unintended consequences. The scientists who developed DDT didn’t create it to harm mammals or the environment. They created it to kill insects and mosquitos that destroyed crops and carried disease. But when the disastrous side effects were documented and revealed, they wouldn’t or couldn’t accept them.

You might say that sometimes not only do the “means” NOT justify the “ends,” they often don’t even accomplish the ends.