Week 8 Topic

For this week I decided to look at the controversial subject of banned books in the United States. There are some that I noticed right off the bat. All Quiet on the Western Front, The Call of the Wild, The Catcher in the Rye, and the one that surprised me the most was James and the Giant Peach. These books all feature some sort of content that would be seen as very controversial to give to kids who are just adapting to the literary world but I also feel like these books are crucial to understanding our world. All Quiet on the Western Front apparently featured 'anti-American' themes when the book tries to bolster the German military but how is that different from what our military does when confronting 'our' enemies. Call of the Wild has Socialist themes and during the time it came out the US Government was trying to restrict the outreach of the Communist agenda. The Catcher in the Rye follows a kid through a tough time, and honestly I think it's pretty boring and tame. James in the Giant Peach apparently was banned due to involvement with the psychedelic drug era.

I disagree with banning books. We should not limit what is accessible to developing minds. They should see other outlooks, and other ideas and learn to think about what it is they are reading about. Trying to contrive their minds does more harm than good. We cannot feed them safe books. I think feeding into this wave controlled viewing has also led to a narrow interpretation of world history, and events so I think we just need to let kids read.

I'm into spy novels like Ian Fleming and even Tom Clancy. I have Killing Floor, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, and Red Storm Rising just to name a few. The Cold War era spy novels jump into a world that might've existed beneath our very noses yet nobody really knows about. It's a genre of exploration into the sensibilities of nations, and the greed of the Arms Race. It opens my eyes to the possibilities of what is going on around us, and it has led me to think about many of our own issues and how it might all just be a ploy to keep us distracted when we think we're getting involved.