Free The Sacrificial Man by Ruth Dugdall Page A

university.”
“Surely that can’t be right, there must be many students who are here because they want to study.” Her tone is sharp.
“Miss Austin, I long for pupils with genuine aptitude, who wish to learn for learning’s sake. Sometimes I despise my students. I see them texting on their mobiles in my class, I’m forced to read work plagiarised from the internet. And not one of them would choose to sit in their room studying when they could be out partying. They think that English Literature is dead and gone, irrelevant to their modern lives of rap and horror films, gadgets and gizmos. They don’t realise that nothing they experience is new.”
“But on the video the students were totally rapt by your lecture. Not one of them looked distracted.”
“Well, I work hard to keep them entertained. That’s why it’s so wrong that I’m not allowed to teach. This week I was scheduled to give a lecture on St Agnes Eve . The poem is not a romantic love story but a sensual exploration of a rape. That would have got their attention. It’s not politically correct and I was looking forward to the pseudo-feminists’ reaction. But don’t be fooled, Miss Austin. The students that appeared so engrossed on that tape, would shortly afterwards be drinking vodka and snorting cocaine in the union bar. You saw evidence of that yourself.”
Cate is silent for a while, “Who was he?”
“No-one who matters. Alex won’t last long. I failed his last essay and he can’t progress into the final year if he fails another. Which he will.” I drain my glass and push it aside.
“Doesn’t it bother you? It’s such a waste. His future… he’s only, what, eighteen?”
“And not my problem. I didn’t force the drugs into his veins.”

Eleven
     
We all have choices. You know that, don’t you, as well as I? To exist, to breathe; to nullify life with narcotics. It’s all a choice. Choices, of course, don’t happen randomly. They come to us at a certain time, in a special way. But still, we choose. Smith made his choice: to submit is also to act. There is always a schema behind actions, behind deeds. You just have to look hard enough. That’s how I analyse the dead poets, looking for a pattern behind the words, searching for the themes and messages under the surface. It’s how I live, looking for the meaning, the leitmotif of life. So I don’t think it was an accident that long before I met Smith I came across the story of Armin Meiwes, who even then was old news and only commanded one column of print, not even on the front page. It wasn’t my newspaper, I rarely buy one, but had been left in the staff common room, on a chair, waiting for me. It was unusual to find the staff room empty. Normally several lecturers would be jostling for position by the open window, cigarette in hand, or would be chatting by the coffee machine. But it was approaching the end of term and a warm day. My colleagues would be seated on the grass with their stacks of essays for marking, or in their rooms preparing for the imminent exodus. I was alone in the staff room. And the paper was next to me, already folded at the page, as if to draw my attention: ARMIN MEIWES NOT A MURDERER .
     
The headline was an announcement, a quote from the defence, and I pulled the paper on to my lap to read the rest of the article.
Armin Meiwes killed and partially ate a man he met via the internet in March 2001. He was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for eight and a half years. Last year, an appeal court ordered a re-trial to establish whether Meiwes was guilty of murder. The 44-year-old denies the charge and says he simply carried out a willing victim’s instructions. He admitted killing the German-based computer specialist Bend-Juergen Brundes at Meiwes’ home in the town of Rotenburg.
Meiwes’ legal team argued the defendant was ‘killing on request’, a form of illegal euthanasia that carries a maximum five year sentence. They argue that two consensual adults