Overlooking Our Faults

One of the most challenged books for 2009 was The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger in 1951 and has been subject to numerous challenges for a variety of reasons. The story, which centers on a young man who’s having difficulties in his life, paints a picture of life that is gritty and imperfect. The book has been aggressively challenged in schools all over America for over forty years, with reasons for the challenges ranging from objections to the profanity in the book, to objections about the sexual references contained in it. The Catcher in the Rye has been restricted primarily from high school students and school libraries, though because of the controversy surrounding it, many schools later reinstated it. It has been several years since I read The Catcher in the Rye, but one of my stronger recollections of it is how realistic the book seemed. When I read The Catcher in the Rye, I felt it was showing a realistic (even if occasionally ugly) picture, and I strongly disagree with the challenge, because I believe that literature (good or bad), is a part of our lives and our history. A book that shows the ugly side of our world is not a ‘bad’ book, but a real one, and efforts to hide socially unacceptable parts of our society from our children, gives them a false picture of their own lives. I feel that the challenges that were overturned are supporting our right to choose for ourselves what we read, and those that upheld the challenge and banned the book, are promoting the censorship of reality.