To Kill A Mockingbird Should Not Be Banned Essay

Kids love freedom. They thrive on it. It’s a part of growing up. The older and more responsible you are the more freedoms you will get. Parents at a variety of schools are restricting the one freedom of children that they should always have. The freedom to chose a book. A number of schools have banned the classic, award winning book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. This book is about a little girl who’s father is defending an African American man in court in the south during the 1930’s. Sounds harmless? Many don’t think so! “To Kill A Mockingbird” should not be be banned because it tells an important fictional story about America's past.

One of the reasons To Kill a Mockingbird was banned is because in this book they talk about rape. A man is being accused of rape ,and they do talk in detail about the alleged rape at the trial. Rape is by no means encouraged in this book. The

topic of rape is talked about in a very respectable and mature way. This is topic that is commonly talked about on the news, on a daily basis. Many kids watch the news, but the news is not banned for talking about rape, so why should this book be. Rape is also talked about on popular television shows all the time. An example is Law and Order: Special Victims.This show talks about rape cases as well, and goes in detail about how the rape occurred. Today's youngsters are still allowed to watch that ,so why can’t they read this book. Are you noticing a pattern here?

Another reason this book is banned is for the racism displayed by the characters throughout the writing. This book does contain racism, but in the 1930’s in the south that is just how it was. Most people thought that Caucasian people were better than African Americans. This book does however have the antagonists participating in racism, and no one wants to be a villain they all want to be the heros. Kids in America know that this was our past ;they need to realized we learned from it. Racism is also displayed in many other books and movies such as The Help which many students have watched.

The number one reason for this book being banned is the language and racial slurs.

The racial slurs in this book include “nigger” , “whore-lady”, “damn”, and etc. These terms are rather harsh, but are not just found in this book. The “N” word is a popular word used in lots of r&b, hip-hop, and rap music. This term is used in racists context in music that is popular with teenagers. Profanity appears in many television shows that air on television that are popular with teenagers,preteens, and even elementary school children. An example of some of these shows are “Gotham” and “Pretty Little Liars”. These were common terms used in this time period as well. Mrs. Lee was just staying true to the time period.

As you can now see “To Kill A Mockingbird” should not be be banned because it tells an important fictional story about America's past. This book does contain rape, violence, and foul language. The author is keeping true to the time period. Also these kind of things are seen in the world on a daily basis. Us children should not be sheltered from these kind of serious

topics.