Why Slaughterhouse Five Should Be Banned

Research Paper
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most frequently banned books in the United States, and the reasons for its banning are quite apparent. The novel's offenses include explicit sexual scenes and language, frequent profanity, and rather gruesome depictions of violence and disease; however, the book is more often banned for condemning war, question the actions of the American government and military, and being generally "unpatriotic" (Schmidt 417). The novel commits these "crimes" in an obscene manner, not to offend the reader, or even the government, but to shock readers into awareness of their country's actions, and to encourage said readers to think independently. Because the novel encourages independent thinking,

rather than preaching the ideals of an author, it should not be banned, despite its vulgarity.
Slaughterhouse-Five has an extensive history of being banned by various schools and other institutions.

Requests to ban the book have been made at least eighteen times, with such a request even going to the Supreme Court on one occasion (Morais). The book is often banned by judges who are ignorant of the book's content. One school board declared that the novel should be removed from the school and burned, when not a single one of the judges had actually read it. In this case, the decision to ban the book was made due to a single complaint from a student who found the book’s “unnecessary language” offensive. In this particular case, none of the four judges had actually read the book. This uninformed decision demonstrates quite clearly the ignorance of those who made it; however, the decision in question is merely one out of eighteen

(Schmidt).
One might think that such an ignorant decision would only be made in one of many cases; however such is not the case. In July 2011, Wesley Scroggins, a parent in a Missouri school district, sent a letter to the school board requesting the Slaughterhouse-Five be banned from the school district, as the "[tome is] contrary to the Bible". The vote to have the book removed from the district passed unanimously. Unlike the previous case, one of the judges actually had read the novel; however, the other three had not. Additionally, the parent who filed the initial complaint did not actually have any children in this particular school system (Americans United for Separation of Church and State). As in the previous case, the decision was made by a generally ignorant group of people.
Banning Slaughterhouse-Five directly defies the purpose for which Vonnegut wrote the novel.

As the director of the Vonnegut library stated in response to the book’s banning, “it is shocking and unfortunate that those young adults and citizens would not be considered mature enough to handle the important topics raised by Kurt Vonnegut” (AUSCS). According to the same director, one of the reasons for which Vonnegut wrote the novel was to "impress upon readers that we keep making the same mistake and it doesn’t have to be that way" (Morais). The mistake Vonnegut was specifically referring to when he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five was most likely war and violence in general; however the moral could easily be applied to the banning of Slaughterhouse-Five. Because the book provides insight into an atrocious act committed by the United States, something that is often sidestepped by classes in school, arguments could be made that banning the novel masks the truth from the curious eyes of readers. By preventing this information from coming to light, those who ban the book essentially making children less intelligent by blinding them to

reality.
Several individuals have spoken out against the novel’s banning. At the school that banned the book without reading it, a teacher stated that “[he has] always thought that the purpose of school was to prepare [students] for living in the ‘big, bad world,’ but evidently it isn’t so” and that “a few four-letter words in a book is no big deal”, as most students hear such words on a frequent basis (Schmidt 418). This statement echoes the earlier claim that preventing students from reading the novel profiles students as being too immature to handle the books deep and intellectual themes (AUSCS). All of these arguments against the censoring of Slaughterhouse-Five seem to have the same basis, namely that the novel’s literary merits easily outweigh its instances of vulgarity, and that banning it based upon these moments of obscenity would deny today's youth access to quality, eye-opening literature.
The aforementioned literary merits of Slaughterhouse-Five easily eclipse its occasional vulgarity. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut tells the story through three different personas. These personas include Billy Pilgrim, who, being the protagonist, is directly exposed to the harshness of the novels setting; the author, who having survived a war, sympathizes with Billy's suffering; and the narrator, who is almost completely detached from the strife of war, and has a view similar to that of the Tralfamadorians. As a literary critic noted, “Vonnegut’s view that man must try to ameliorate the suffering of his fellow man… is not shared consistently either by his narrator or by Billy Pilgrim” (Schatt 98-99). By presenting multiple conflicting viewpoints, Vonnegut challenges readers to examine these views and to form their own opinions, rather than simply conforming to the norms of society and siding with a popular figure. Vonnegut draws upon his own experience in life to create these different outlooks on life, in addition to accurately portraying themes of authority, the dangers of science, and pessimism regarding one’s own fate (Henry 82-83).