Books that Shaped America

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (www.bannedbooksweek.org). All of the books mentioned in the last sentences were books that “shaped America,” and were in some way or another banned or expurgated by taking all of the explicit words, and content, out of them. In doing so, the people who made the decisions to ban the books, or otherwise take out the content, greatly decreased the viewpoints that the author was trying to conceive. I believe that, unless the reading is for children under the age of, say, 13, then books like the aforementioned ones above, should not be banned or censored at all. Sometimes you have a rare case, like mine, where kids skip a few grades, and are really ahead of their class, and still a little immature, but if they are in a certain grade, they should be allowed to read, and understand what the author was originally trying to portray before the “people who think they know best” go and censor the author’s initial intent.
Some of the best literature, also happens to be some of the most controversial pieces. The books mentioned above, some were banned because of language, other because of racism and sexuality, but all of them were important pieces about life lessons people should read about. I believe that books like these actually enhance our learning abilities, and not daunt them. I believe that it should not be up to the government, or the FCC, to control what citizens do or do not read in school systems. They have taken away enough by taking The Bible out of schools, it is a right our founding fathers gave to us when this country was first established, t...

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...tioned books, plus many, many more that have been banned or changed, should be brought back, as long as the parents of the children to be reading these items agree to allow it, so that they can get a full effect of how the reader was trying to portray his, or the actor’s emotions, in the book. There should also be an age in school that they start letting children read these things, because obviously it is not going to be appropriate for a fourth grader to start reading someone that is saying a curse word every other word, or one that focuses on negative things like racism, because that information could be detrimental to the overall learning capabilities of the kids. Finally, some of the literature that was banned years ago, are being reinstated into schools, because of people like me that have the same opinion that I do, and will stand up and fight for our rights.