Banning Catcher In The Rye

The Catcher In The Rye: Why Ban Such A Great Book? Bad words, explicit content, a kid who is being viewed as a bad influence. These things all correlate to the concern surrounding the book The Catcher In The Rye. According to the About Banned and Challenged Books Article, “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.” The article also tells us, “Books are usually challenged with the best intentions- to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information.” But why should The Catcher In The Rye be banned from the English curricula in schools? Should students be allowed to read controversial material?
The Catcher …show more content…
There is a cartoon that illustrates why Holden is a protector of innocence. In the Snapshots Cartoon, three boys are standing on a baseball field in the middle of a rye field. At the edge of the baseball field, Holden is standing with his back turned. He stands as a guard, the border between childhood and adulthood, waiting to save someone from becoming a “phony,” as Holden would say. This cartoon shows that Holden is trying to protect kids from the naughtiness of the adult world, because he simply does not want to grow up to be naughty. Similarly, in the book, he emphasizes, “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all…And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff…I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” Basically, he describes almost the exact scenario in the cartoon, except for the cliff. He also says that that is the only thing he wants to be, because he feels that innocent little kids do not deserve to be naughty, dumb adults, being that he has been around these adults and concluded that they are bad examples and that they should know better. This book should not be banned from the English curricula because underneath his naughtiness, …show more content…
Yes, the book is about a teenager who gets kicked out of school and goes to New York and does a lot of negative things, but it is for a reason, and that reason is not worth being challenged. It is worth letting people know. In conclusion, whenever you hear people talk about the explicit content and bad words, and the kid who is being viewed as a bad influence, you can take all these concerns surrounding this book and say that The Catcher In The Rye should not be banned from the English curricula in schools and students should be allowed to read controversial material if they have