Looking For Alaska Should Not Be Banned Essay

Looking for Alaska, the book of teenage life, is a common book in school libraries. It is a book about teenagers at a boarding school who live their lives in a different way than many, but not all. Many parents would not like their kids to read the book, but many feel like they need to be exposed to the harsh reality of the book. This has became a debate on whether it needs to be banned or not. Looking for Alaska should not be banned, even though there are some negative scenes, the real meaning overrides them. Seeing it from the opposition’s side, they say that the book has foul language, “‘sexually explicit descriptions,”’ scenes full of “drinking and smoking,” and much more, which makes it too obscene for children (Coles 2016, Odyssey). They will argue that they don’t think children should be exposed to such vulgar content. Although Looking for Alaska promotes the idea of living life to the fullest, they aren’t taking into consideration that their children go to school with inappropriate people, see this on the news, and hear about this stuff everywhere. The book isn’t even intended to cause teenagers to do bad things as much as show …show more content…
Smoking, drinking, and bad behavior happens a million times a day and banning one book won’t take away the idea that it’s all obtainable if they want to live like that. Teens have already figured out how they want to live their life, and a book isn’t going to change it. It should be kept in schools because it is written very well, speaking straight to teenagers. It’s life, and life can have pessimistic parts, and as people get older, they deserve to know about it, if they haven’t already been a part of it. Looking for Alaska shows the result of bad actions. In the book, Alaska, young and wild, and her friends smoke, drink, and make many bad decisions together and in the end, Alaska dies, which goes to prove that stuff can cost you your