All of us have opinions from whether we like our coffee hot or iced to who we want to be president. We often try to persuade others that our opinions are superior to theirs. But how far would you go to convince someone that your opinion is the right one to have? Would you burn someone’s opinion in a furnace? That is what Charles McCarthy did to a book that he did not want students in his school district to be reading. In response, the author, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote a letter titled, I Am Very Real to McCarthy. In this letter, Vonnegut effectively persuades McCarthy that burning his books was un-American and wrong by using ethos, pathos, and logos.
By appealing to pathos, Vonnegut makes McCarthy reevaluate for his actions. He starts off by saying that he is going to show the reader how real he is. He points out that he is “very real” multiple times throughout the letter (2). This serves as a constant reminder that what McCarthy …show more content…
Vonnegut states that McCarthy acted in “an ignorant, harsh un-American manner”. He backs up his opinion in the next paragraph by pointing out that “if you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own”(2). This is not a straight up fact, but every American knows that they have the freedom of speech. By alluding to this fact, he makes his argument stronger, and he makes the reader think about how he might have taken away his students’ rights. He also states that “wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burns them”(2). This simple fact makes the reader stop, and really consider his actions. The reader was just compared to nations that have had wars declared on them. This leads to thoughts about Nazi Germany, and how they burned books during the Holocaust. McCarthy thought that he was doing the right thing, but this makes him step back and realize that was he did was
By appealing to pathos, Vonnegut makes McCarthy reevaluate for his actions. He starts off by saying that he is going to show the reader how real he is. He points out that he is “very real” multiple times throughout the letter (2). This serves as a constant reminder that what McCarthy …show more content…
Vonnegut states that McCarthy acted in “an ignorant, harsh un-American manner”. He backs up his opinion in the next paragraph by pointing out that “if you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own”(2). This is not a straight up fact, but every American knows that they have the freedom of speech. By alluding to this fact, he makes his argument stronger, and he makes the reader think about how he might have taken away his students’ rights. He also states that “wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burns them”(2). This simple fact makes the reader stop, and really consider his actions. The reader was just compared to nations that have had wars declared on them. This leads to thoughts about Nazi Germany, and how they burned books during the Holocaust. McCarthy thought that he was doing the right thing, but this makes him step back and realize that was he did was