Photo credit: Irina Apoyan
On the 16th of May a group of 12th graders with their supervisor, Ms. Nune presented the second part of the class project named «Banned Books». The project aimed to discover and investigate the reasons behind banning the well-known book of the 21st century and more. Students chose and researched worldwide bestsellers such as «The Kite Runner» by Khaled Hosseini, «The Alchemist» by Paulo Coelho, «Fahrenheit 451» by Ray Bradbury, «Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus» by Mary Shelley, etc. I was participating in the event as a host. During the presentation students shortly introduced the plots of the chosen books and their main ideas. They mentioned the leading characters, protagonists, and antagonists, as well as shared their own ideas regarding the epilogues of the books. All of the presented books are among world favorites, therefore students were very excited to figure out the dark stories behind the unfair decisions of labeling them. Some of the students thought that the decision to ban certain books was unfair, and others tried to defend the determination, however, everyone managed to explain the reasons and arguments behind the decision.
In general, there are a few common reasons behind the ban, which include Racial Issues, and the encouragement of Dangerous or Damaging Lifestyles, such as drug use, cohabitation without marriage, or homosexuality. Blasphemous [‘blæsfɪməs]Dialogue (disrespect for God or a religion), where authors may use words like «God» or «Jesus» as profanity, or include profanity or swear words offensive to some readers. Sexual Situations or Dialogue, Violence or Negativity, Presence of Witchcraft, are often seen in books with magic or witchcraft themes like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series. Religious Affiliations (unpopular religions) and political Bias, typically occur when books support or examine extreme political parties or philosophies like fascism, communism, anarchism, etc. All of those can be found in the book presented by our students.
I chose the book named «Lord of the Flies» by William Golding, which I presented on our first presentation of the project. The book includes violent scenes and offensive wording which might be sensible for certain readers, however, the main idea of the book is hidden behind it all. Therefore, in my opinion, the book shouldn’t have been banned or censored from libraries around the world. The presentation of my book can be found here.
Overall the project was a huge success for all of us as we managed to learn a lot about our favorite books and had the opportunity to speak up about them no matter the «taboo» or «shame» that had been put on the books over time.
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