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In Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451, showed a dystopian society in which owning books is illegal. The general nature of the society is based on destruction and emotionless, broken families. Bradbury conveys this world in a way that one cannot help but to read it as disturbing fiction. However, upon looking at our own world, we see our limits and standards for acceptable reading material close tighter around the neck of literary freedom.
People are advised to not read books that have correct historical language or biography's with intense scenes of passion or rape. The world begs for violence through its media but scorns reading as if the message were there to ridicule and destroy us. Is Mr. Bradbury's fictional world strictly fiction or is it more like our society than we know?
We will examine that question now. I started by obtaining a list of banned and challenged books. Upon reading the list I was amazed at some of the books that were on it. Was the list full of horrific books of mass murder and sexual themes?
One would think it would be. However, this was not so. Three of the books that shocked me were... James and the Giant Peach by Ronald Dahl. Challenged due to scenes that were "anti-family. " Anyone who has read this book knows that the "anti-family" themes mentioned are that James is abused so he runs away. Kids are abused in everyday life and James can serve as a hero to them, someone they can relate to, but some stuck up people decided to shelter their children from life's harsh realities.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. This autobiography tells the story of the authors' life. It is purely true, nonfiction. So why is it challenged, because of the description of a rape that occurred to the author.
Parents feel that children should not read this explicit material. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers. Challenged for offensive language, racism and violence. VIOLENCE can you believe that?
Heaven forbid that a novel about war have violence in it! It is time that we let America's children grow up. They already see this stuff in the movies, on TV, in their music, etc. Anyway, to find out other people's opinions, I first turned to Mrs.
Andrasik, the main librarian at Turkey Foot Middle School. She said that she has never had to remove books from the shelves but she has had to switch some from the student shelves to the teacher shelves. These two books were moved because one was sexually explicit and one involved a school shooting. One of these books had been pointed out by a parent and it was not moved until Mrs.
Andrasik, herself read it. Suprisingly Mrs. Andrasik has even had a parent complain that these books shouldn't have been moved to another shelf. Next, I went to see an English teacher. Roberta Schultz is the English 3 Honors teacher at Dixie and she openly admits that most of the books that she teaches have been challenged or banned somewhere. She has dealt with parents who have not wanted their children to read the book Ordinary People.
In these cases she has allowed the students to read something else. She also feels that some books have been unfairly challenged. "Huck Finn comes to mind. It is clearly an anti-racist work but it gets challenged for the "n" word, " says Mrs. Schultz. She understands that some parents might not want their children exposed to sex or violence at an early age but she doesn't agree with censoring books.
She believes that censorship limits our freedom of thought. She says, "I cannot stand magazines like Hustler, but I do not think I have the right to keep people from "reading" it. We cannot have freedom of thought without bad thinking. I believe parents can instill the kind of thinking they wish their children to do. If they are disgusted by Hustler, they can show their children how to make healthy choices. " Afterwards I decided to ask the kids, the ones whose parents are complaining about how they felt toward all different types of censorship. I was surprised to find that many people didn't know what censorship was until it was explained to them.
The following are some quotes on censorship... "I feel like they aren't being fair because I can look at things that sometimes aren't right and just experience it for myself and see if I want to stop or if I can handle it. " -Emily Rath, 6 th grader@ Conner Middle School "I think people should have their own choice on what is and is not acceptable. " -Megan Graves, Sophmore @ Conner High School "It's good as long as it's used well. "-Grant Tucker, Sophmore @ Dixie Heights "It has good intent, but it hinders a lot of things. Mainly, parents want to protect their children so much, and censorship is beginning to get ridiculous. " -Kirsten Shockey, Senior @ Conner High "There is no validity in censorship. If someone doesn't want an idea to be portrayed they need to educate people in their way of thinking. " -Robbie Gayhart, Senior @ Connor High School The play Inherit the Wind is a frequently challenged play about evolution being taught in schools and the freedom of thought. I asked Jessica Evans, a biology teacher at Dixie Heights about her feelings on teaching evolution. Ms. Evans thinks that if people took the time to learn a little, they would realize that there is no need for a controversy between Evolution and Creationism.
She feels that she couldn't be a good biology teacher without teaching evolution and she believes in having an open mind. "I can reconcile God and science. You can believe in both without compromising either, " she says. She says that she would never teach creationism alongside of evolution because there is not enough time to debate the issue and she thinks that people can choose for themselves what they want to believe. From these opinions I have come to believe that we are probably heading towards Ray Bradbury's dystopia. We censor our fact and imagination by censoring the literature we read yet we present the same view points that we hoped to ban in other forms of media.
We have decided that people are incapable of reading a book and not have been influence by the ideology presented in that book. If someone disagrees with the ideology that is presented, I dare you to take a look at the world around you, and keep your mouth shut.
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