Letter to CM

Dear Cormac McCarthy,

     Though I have only read one of your works, ‘The Road’, I feel that you have made a good connection between writer and reader.  Words and characters that may not share your views, but you are aware of them.  You can get to know a person from what they say, no matter if they believe it or not.  The contradictions of characters’ opinions may show your argument in one.  After all, a bias is sure to show itself if you simply make up an argument between one that you agree with and another. 

     Anyways, I’m writing this letter just to ask how you really feel.  What’s your take on the topics, and whose side do you personally take?  The characters should hold at least some of what you think to be true, and I’d like to know which character that is. 

           --Eric

The Class's New Direction

     The fact that you ask us what a new direction should be for the class implies that you don’t think our class is in the best direction it could be going in.  So maybe it’s not, but maybe it is.  In grade school, we had a fairly boring class, but there was one thing the teacher did that kept it interesting.  The representative that I talked to today from Marquette University also had been exposed to this kind of method by one of his professors, as he told me. 

     What my grade school teacher did was announce before the class that a particular student had been caught cheating on a test and we had a choice: we could all take a zero as a class, or she could take the zero alone.  We voted, and after the class ended the teacher explained that it was in fact a lie, and that she was not being punished for cheating.  It was simply an experiment to see what we would do. 

     The Marquette professor’s way of doing it was slightly different.  He taught a religion course, but at some point told his students that he came to the conclusion that God did not exist.  For the next three weeks, he held a discussion, and completely turned down and beat any arguments that God existed.  During the fourth week, he revealed it was untrue that he believed that, and that it was done simply to see the reaction. 

     A direction like that would be perfect, keeping everyone alert, and playing devil’s advocate a little more seriously.