Why 1984 should not be banned

Search this site Submit Search. Rebecca Munday Read Next. Navigate Left. Navigate Right. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Share via Email. JSD Superintendent Lisa Sherick also reportedly questioned whether one passage of the book aligns with community goals, ideals and institutions. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian.

He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Sherick said several options were on the table as to how the district would deal with the book, including keeping it and allowing concerned students to read a different book or completely restricting it. The petition against a ban, created Friday by an anonymous user, has continued gaining traction through Banned Books Week, which started Sunday. In a time in which we consider ourselves forward thinkers, it is shocking to still consider any conversation revolving around sex taboo.

In writing "50 Shades," James gives those writers a voice — those that have been waiting for the right moment to share their deepest, darkest desires with the world.

It is necessary to normalize thoughts about sex and not slap tape across our lips to keep from expressing our tastes in the bedroom. A must-read dystopian novel for any teen, I first read this book in middle school, and then I reread it in high school and college.

He can see color in a black-and-white world as well as the environment, animals, human emotions and past experiences. The book sheds light on the importance of freedom and living life as one chooses to, but the message goes deeper than that. Valuing our relationships with our friends, family, and colleagues in the real world is a gift.

Oftentimes, we lose sight of what makes our life beautiful, even though it is right in front of us. And those lessons are conveyed elegantly in this book, from start to finish. Banning this book would be a loss for children, not a gain — Sudiksha Kochi. I provide this context because it absolutely shaped the way I read the story about wealthy teens at a New England boarding school at the start of WWII, and understood the relationship between Gene and Finny — one of platonic love bordering on romantic, one of pride bordering on envy and one of playing around bordering on violence.

As clarified in David Levithan's afterword included in my edition, Knowles did not intend on homoeroticism between the characters. Now, as a dark-skinned Black woman rereading it, I understand the suffering that Pecola Breedlove was subjected to. But in a nation still reeling from the MeToo movement, we cannot afford to look away.

Black women, like Native American women, are at a disproportionate risk for sexual violence. Fertile women are reproductive slaves, forced to bear children for the elite. In the s, when it was published, the book read as a response to the political rise of Christian fundamentalists, the bombing of abortion clinics and the control of those behind the Iron Curtain.

As we sit in with climate change threatening our coastlines and crops, a rising threat of nationalism and attempts to chip away at the hard-fought rights of women, minorities and the LGBTQ community, the plot seems evermore an apt prediction.

What could be more important now than a book that explores the dangers of totalitarianism as we watch democracy challenged on the very steps of Congress? A book that explores the power of women as the MeToo and TimesUp movements push the next wave of feminism forward? A book with dire warnings about what can happen when resources get scarce, as drought and wildfires have become the new norm for a swath of our country?

It was a necessary book in the s and it's still a necessary book in One of the most thought-provoking and interesting dystopian books I have come across, I read "" back in high school when it was assigned reading for my English class. There is simply no other book that can quite frankly show readers what it would be like to live in a society where the freedom to think and make choices for oneself is not allowed.

This book sheds light on why it is important for people to express themselves and make choices, and why freedom of expression is important in society. Another important theme that struck my attention was misinformation and disinformation being spread by the ruling party.

As an early career reporter, I strive to make sure that the public knows the truth and the facts. I fell down the "Hunger Games" rabbit hole during the pandemic.

What started as something to pass time turned into a deep dive into Collins' post-apocalyptic world of Panem, a society deeply divided by wealth disparity, where the elite are more concerned with pageantry than basic human rights. The rich got richer. The poor got poorer. The tale may have been outrageously dystopian when Collins originally published her first installment in , but it is not as outrageous in the lens of She is thrust into impossible peril with unfathomable stakes, and she overcomes it.

Additionally, in , the book was challenged in Jackson County, Florida, for being pro-communism. When I reread it as a young adult, it was like a new book — beyond the epic fantasy plot were deeply challenging, dark, and beautiful wrestlings with philosophy, religion, sexuality and love. Why it was banned: Challenged for promoting atheism and attacking Christianity, particularly the Catholic church.