Photo illustration by Tim Harrison/Daily Kent Stater |
387 B.C. -- Plato advocated expurgating The Odyssey for the more immature readers. Caligula also tried to suppress it because it expressed Greek ideals of freedom.
1563 -- William Tyndale, a man who assisted in translating the Bible into English, was captured, strangled and burned at the stake by opponents of translating the Bible into the vernacular.
1973 -- Slaughterhouse-Five is burned in Drake, N. Dakota.
1992 -- Students at Venado Middle School in Irvine, California received copies of Fahrenheit 451 with scores of words -- mostly "hell"s and "damn"s -- blacked out. Ironically, the novel is explicitly about book burning and censorship.
No one would argue that the world has changed drastically in the past 100 years. There have been wars and Woodstock, life-changing inventions such as the computer, and amendments to the Constitution for equal rights and equal opportunities. We've come a long way ... right?
Well, Banned Books Week aims to show there are still changes that need to be made. Banned Books Week is an event that started back in 1981 and is annually observed during the last week of September. The purpose of the week is to support the freedom to read and to show that censorship is not an acceptable compromise of that freedom. This year's project starts Sept. 23 and goes until Sept. 30.
The project is sponsored by the American Libraries Association, American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. The week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.
The American Libraries Association Web site lists the top 100 banned or challenged books from 1990-1999. A note on the association's Web site (www.ala.org) says that "the top 100 list was compiled from 5,718 challenges to library materials reported to or recorded by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom."
The site also makes a note that "research shows that reported challenges represent only 20 to 25 percent of all challenges made."
If the Constitution allows it...
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." --The First Amendment
What causes the need for some people to censor literature?
The American Libraries Association Web site offers a breakdown of the reasons books have been challenged in the past 10 years.
Here is a sampling of the 5,718 challenges recorded:
*1,446 challenges were made on the basis of a book being "sexually explicit."
*1,262 challenges were made on the basis of a book using "offensive language."
*1,167 challenges were made on the basis that a book was "unsuited to age group."
Candace Perkins Bowen is academic program coordinator in the school of Journalism and Mass Communication. Bowen also teaches classes regarding high school journalism, where censorship is often an issue.
Bowen said she thinks that people feel the need to ban books because "they have no faith in youth and seem to think that anything out of the norm will destroy their minds."
"How can today's youth become critical thinkers if they are told what to think?" Bowen continued. "Of course, some things are more logical reading materials as a part of a curriculum, but that's an education issue. Generally, these books that have been banned definitely have literary and artistic merit.
"Look at the list of banned books," she said. "It's not a compilation of porn magazine fodder. It's outstanding literature, or at least harmless diversion."
Marjorie Tyson, a junior secondary education major, agrees with Bowen on this issue.
"Most banning or censorship," Tyson said, "is probably more of a struggle over who has the power in the situation than a problem with a certain work."
Sarah Tallman, a junior pre-medicine biology major, concurs with Bowen on this fact as well.
"The banning of books is a control issue, if nothing else," Tallman said. "But it has no merit since children will eventually read what they want to read.
"It is probably best that they are allowed to read controversial material in the controlled setting of school anyway, so that they can ask their own questions and receive legitimate answers, rather than striking out on their own and being misled."
Marilyn Apseloff, an English professor here at Kent who teaches children's literature classes, believes that "except for a parent and his or her children, no one has the right to censor what someone else might want to read."
Apseloff did say that the only literature that she could see banning was hate literature for children.
"But I don't know if I could actually do it," Apseloff continued. "Once censorship of one area is condoned, that opens the door to other kinds of censorship."
The ones that started it all...
Not since the time of the first transcribed versions of the have books stirred up as much controversy as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Jim Zwick, the guide to the literature of Mark Twain on the search engine About.com, said in an article on the site that "if Mark Twain was alive today, he would probably be appearing at libraries and in online chat rooms during Banned Books Week to discuss the fate of his own books.
"He certainly deserves recognition for the number of times his books have been challenged or banned in the past 112 years," Zwick writes, "ever since Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1885 and immediately banned by the Concord, Massachusetts Public Library."
Zwick also said in his writing that when the officials of the Concord Public Library banned his book as "rough, course, and inelegant ... the whole book being more suited to the slums than an intelligent, respectable people," he insisted that his books be sold door to door by subscription rather than being available through bookstores.
Since the original problems with Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, there have been numerous other attempts to rid the books from libraries, schools and even countries.
In 1905, Huckleberry Finn was banned from the children's room of the Brooklyn Public Library for its use of less-than-eloquent language. In 1957, the book was withdrawn from the curriculum because it frequently used the word "nigger." In 1969, it was removed from the Miami-Dade Junior College curriculum because it was thought to create an emotional block for black students. The book has also been challenged as racist in Illinois in 1976, Pennsylvania and Iowa in 1981, Virginia and Texas in 1982, Pennsylvania again in 1983, Illinois in 1984 and Nebraska in 1986.
Tom Sawyer has been challenged in many the same ways, and was even confiscated at the then U.S.S.R. border in 1930.
Censorship conclusions...
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a speech at Dartmouth College in 1952, "Don't think that you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
Those who support Banned Books Week endorse reading as many of the banned and challenged books as possible.
Marjorie Tyson said that she has read several of the books on the top 100 list compiled by the American Libraries Association.
"Sometimes, they confront mature topics," Tyson said, "but I do not believe ignoring the topics will keep our youth from learning about them."
Tallman said she too has read many of the books on the list.
"Honestly, all but one of [the books she has read], I read in a classroom setting," Tallman said. "My teachers helped me to better understand these books, explaining the controversial material in a way that suited my age group and level of comprehension."
Bowen offers a teacher's view of the issue.
"To Kill a Mockingbird was once banned in my high school because it mentioned rape," Bowen said. "Later, as a sophomore English teacher, I taught it to teenagers myself -- and it's a wonderful story."
Apseloff also said that she uses challenged books in her children's literature class.
"I have no qualms about using challenged books in the classroom and start each semester with at least two," Apseloff said. "William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen."
Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, best explained the theory of those who oppose censorship in an article on the association's Banned Books Week Web site.
"Banned Books Week is about choice and respecting the rights of others to choose for themselves and their families what they wish to read," Finan said. "Book banning and challenging has a domino effect. If we stand by and let the first book come off the shelf, we run the risk they will all come tumbling down."