English III: "Dear Mr. McCarthy" letter from "Palm Sunday" by Kurt Vonnegut

In this excerpt from the first chapter, "The First Amendment," of Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, Vonnegut shares a letter he wrote in 1973 to the chairman of the Drake School Board in North Dakota, where his book Slaughterhouse-Five was burned and banned.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. capacity
    a specified function
    Dear Mr. McCarthy:
    I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board.
  2. extraordinarily
    in a highly unusual, impressive, or extreme manner
    Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me.
  3. exploit
    use or manipulate to one's advantage
    I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake.
  4. editorial
    of an article stating opinions or giving perspectives
    We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews.
  5. reputation
    the general estimation that the public has for a person
    It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world.
  6. decency
    the quality of conforming to rules of propriety and morality
    Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?
  7. consign
    commit forever
    Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?
  8. veteran
    a person who has served in the armed forces
    I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart.
  9. faculty
    an inherent cognitive or perceptual power of the mind
    I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York.
  10. entitled
    qualified for by right according to law
    But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools.
  11. mystified
    totally perplexed and mixed up
    I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done.
  12. sacred
    worthy of respect or dedication
    Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them.
  13. circulate
    cause to be distributed
    If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
  14. denounce
    accuse or condemn openly as disgraceful
    If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books—books you hadn’t even read.
  15. expose
    make accessible to some action or influence
    You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.
Created on Sun Apr 19 21:25:24 EDT 2026 (updated Fri Jun 05 11:51:14 EDT 2026)

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