| Fish in the River of Knowledge | |
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.
— Bill of Rights
For those of us who have loved literature almost from the time we could first walk, it's hard to believe that any of the greatest works of written art have been challenged, restricted, removed, or banned. It's scary to think where such censorship could lead if it were allowed to run its course. To celebrate our right to choose from the racks of wonderful literature — even those more controversial works — the Banned Books Week has been established. This year, the week runs from September 23-30, 2000.
Banned Books Week has been observed since 1981, making this the 19th annual event, with events taking place in libraries across the country. If you walk into your local library or bookstore, you'll probably notice the displays featuring the theme for this year's Banned Book Week: "Fish in the River of Knowledge."
This celebration is important for several reasons. First, it reminds us that that censorship still takes place. We think we're open to new ideas and controversy. But, even if we personally are open, there are constant challenges and disputes over the use of books in schools and libraries across the country.
Second, we are reminded that we shouldn't take our freedom to read for granted. Even though the ideals of censorship sometimes seem to have the most innocent of intentions, history teaches us a very different lesson. Books that we now consider to be rather tame were once considered controversial and unacceptable.
Books like Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," Orwell's "Animal Farm," Milton's" Areopagitica," Wright's "Black Boy," and Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath "were suppressed on political grounds. Others, like Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason," "The Bible," Montaigne's "Essays," and Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," have been suppressed on religious grounds.
Of course, a very common complaint from those who challenge books is that the book is "sexually explicit" (1,446 challenges in this decade alone, according to the American Library Association). But, who's to say what "sexually explicit means," when books like "Arabian Nights," Voltaire's "Candide," Blume's "Forever," Boccaccio's "The Decameron," Hardy's "Jude the Obscure," Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and Defoe's "Moll Flanders" have all been suppressed on those sexual grounds.
I find it particularly interesting that Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" was challenged and changed to eliminate some passages and words that were considered inappropriate. "Fahrenheit 451" takes it's title from the temperature at which paper ignites, since the firemen in that book went around torching collections of books. One of the greatest lines of the book comes from Guy Montag's fire captain, who says, that with books "Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man?"
In school and libraries, many of our most cherished classics are still challenged today.
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