Blog #6

As a former student at St. Margaret's Episcopal School, each and every year in lower school (kindergarten through 5th grade) we would visit the library and for a week have certain excerpts of banned books read to us during National Banned Books Week. Thus, I am aware to the great works of writing that are banned and questioned each and every year. After viewing the list of banned books, two novels clearly stood out to me, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Animal Farm by George Orwell. I read both of these books in the 8th grade and I really enjoyed reading these novels. These texts were extremely intriguing to me and I still cannot wrap my head around why someone would want to challenge/ban the book in any way. To Kill a Mockingbird could've been banned due to the crime of rape being mentioned in the novel, however the book mainly highlights the life of the protagonist, Atticus, his family, and his process of proving Tom Robinson innocent. Therefore, there are no true reasons to ban and/or challenge the novel. In Animal Farm, a possible reason that it could have been banned or challenged could have been based on the fact that it criticized the Soviet Union, however the United States has never supported or promoted the Soviets in anyway, thus there are no other true ways of being able to ban or challenge the book. I personally believe that whoever challenged or tried to ban these books is extremely uneducated and oblivious to the fact that we should not be censored to the realities of life. I would go very far to read something that is deemed "illegal" by the community if the book conveys an intriguing topic that is politically and socially correct in a fluent way. Overall, National Banned Books Week is an extremely significant week that raises awareness to the fascinating texts that surround us that may be never noticed or to the controversy of some extremely recognized texts being banned.