Why The Book Of Mice And Men Should Be Banned

Marcus Blystone
Mr Hunter Chaffee
Academic English 11
05/11/17

The History of Banning Of Mice and Men

The American and literary classic Of Mice and Men isn’t so perfect as it's made out to be. The book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has a history of being banned in many schools because it contains profanity, racial slurs, euthanasia, the use of the lord's name in vain and the rude treatment and portrayal of women. Parents and concerned adults called schools to complain and many schools replied with “ We can give them an alternate assignment”, when they could've just taken the book out of the curriculum. Instead of providing the students with a book that was morally right and contained no profanity, they instead gave the exact opposite. Let’s go in depth on the banning of the book.

This shows through in the book during chapter two when George says , “ "'Ain't many guys travel around together,' he mused. 'I don't know why. Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.’ (Steinbeck 35) Many parents believed that the amount of profanity was too much and caused an uproar when teachers had the audacity to ask students to read parts containing profanity from their desk to the class. Most of times, a swear word was combined with the term God, which was unacceptable to many people. Such as in chapter 4 when Crooks is talking to George and says “every damn one of ‘em’s got a piece of land in his hand. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it.”( Steinbeck