Why A Clockwork Orange Should Be Banned

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To Ban or not to Ban: A Clockwork Orange To ban a book means to “remove a book from a public library,” and to challenge a book means to question the author's purpose for writing the book as a whole (Reid 60). Challenging a novel can often lead to its transition to becoming banned. There are a vast number of causes when it comes to the reason for challenging or banning a book. A few of them include: “profanity, violence, sexual acts, negative statements about parents, authority, or traditions, etc.” (Winkler 48). The Infamous novel, A Clockwork Orange, has been banned in several places over the years. Most recently banned in “1982, in Alabama because of objectionable language.” (Doyle). Different people have different mentalities, no one …show more content…

The author did achieve what he set out to do when he forged this book. “He wrote the book after reacting in horror to reports of plans to use “Behavior modification” with American prisoners,” but also because of the time period he lived in, which happened to be the middle of the Cold War (qtd. in Newman). He clearly believed that it would not work. Bobby Newman’s paper states that “Burgess, as a direct extension of his ideas of free will and the repressiveness of state, cannot accept behavioral intervention.” This further proves the point aforementioned in paragraph three. A Clockwork Orange should be challenged, and not banned from libraries and high schools. If people want to ban this book, it should be for a more serious concern. It should not be banned for objectionable language when in this day and age profanity is prevalent in the majority of teenagers. An author writes a book so that he or she can express their feelings at that moment in time. And trying to censor a work they put their heart and soul into writing because of objectionable actions is, in a way, unconstitutional; therefore denying the first amendment to the author because what he wrote is not held within today’s societal

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