Letter to the editor

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Dear Editor of The Independent (London):

I am sending you this letter in response to the article that Johann Hari wrote in 2004 “The Cult of the Killer Nerds. First of all, I think that Johann Hari should be more considerate and consider how the parents of the children who were murdered would feel about an article that is biased and describe the killers as ‘heroes’.  I am the parent of Lauren Dawn Townsend and I was both enraged and agitated when I saw the article because it says that the killers are ‘heroic avengers’ and that it reopened the wounds and that caused me immeasurable amounts of grief.  Secondly, I think that Johann Hari should present the truth in a non-biased way because this article is far too lenient with its treatment of the killers and it is presents people with an alternate view of these killers which your article can be seem to promote.

In paragraph 3, Johann Hari said that “this cult flourishes in another America, among the excluded, bullied, murderous and lost”.  By writing this, he is saying that people who are murderous deserve sympathy; excluded, bullied and lost are all sympathetic words and he has connected by association to the word murderous.  Of doing this, is he saying that murderers who have cold heartedly murdered so many innocents children deserve to be sympathized and they are the real victims of the whole tragic event?

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In paragraph 14, Johaan Hari wrote that “no amount of physical or verbal abuse, it scarcely needs pointing out, can justify a programme of mass murder.”  I believe that it needs pointing because the writer cannot assume that young people know killing is wrong as there are groups out there planning to do the same thing to other people because they were or are being bullied.  We must educate our children to make them understand that murdering is wrong, otherwise the same event would repeat itself again.  For example, the appalling massacre that occurred in Virginia Tech University last ...

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This is an excellent letter which conveys an upset and angry tone through the use of language, punctuation and devices. The writer has used complex sentences expertly and has paragraphed well. The writer needs to think about varying the sentence starters. This piece could also be improved by linking together the beginning and ending. It is important to re read work to avoid 'silly mistakes'. ****