Censorship and The Catcher In The Rye

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If someone is a fan of MTV and watches the majority of their shows he or she may sometimes hear innumerable beeps instead of words. He or she may hear beeps instead of words because the things people are saying are being censored. In Catcher and the Rye, the language or the situations going on cannot be censored because it is a book. By it being a book it can be banned from being sold certain places or not available in public/school libraries. The argument that I have about Catcher and the Rye is, should it be banned or not be banned in schools? I think that this book needs to be banned in elementary and middle schools because of the content it has. Catcher and the Rye needs to be banned because of the language, talking about sex and alcohol, and a teenage boy being depressed.
Censorship is something that can be agreed or disagreed on in today’s culture. Censorship is the control of the information and ideas circulated within a society (What is Censorship?). The twentieth century is really when this became significant to the public. The public has censorship because some ideas may be objectionable or offensive to people. Censorship is everywhere that is available to the public, like television programs, news reports, books, music, and plays. This is prominent because producers, writers, and the government try to make everyone happy and comfortable about what they are watching or listening to.
The first reason Catcher and the Rye should be banned in schools is because of the language that is used. The language that is frequently used is explicit. Anything Holden Caulfield, the narrator of the novel, says has this kind of language. For example, on the very first page of the book Holden says “Besides, I’m not going to tell you my...

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...t has Sixteen and Pregnant, Jersey Shore, and The Real World or reading Fifty Shades of Grey. These examples all have explicit language, sex, and alcohol in them. America should not ban MTV or Fifty Shades of Grey because there are children channels and books for them to read that are age appropriate, so schools should put these books in their libraries. The language, talking about sex and alcohol, and a teenage boy being depressed and judgmental is the reason the Catcher and the Rye needs to be banned in schools because it makes children lose their innocence before they need to.

Works Cited

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951
“What is Censorship”. Retrieved November 6 2013:gilc.org/speech/osistudy/censorship
“Statistics on Teen Pregnancy”. Retrieved November 11 2013: crihb.org/files/statistic_on_teen_pregnancy.pdf

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