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The Pros And Cons Of The Banning Of The Catcher In The Rye

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“Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and wonder what the hell it meant… I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it” (Salinger 25.16). This statement is one of many that has caused The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger to be listed on banned books lists in schools across the country. The Catcher in the Rye is a novel told from the point of view of Holden Caulfield, a mentally unstable teenager, about all of the “Madman Stuff” (Salinger 3) that happens to him throughout a time period of a few months. Holden does not hold back in many of his descriptions of his daily life, including explicit language in his story as well as many sexual references throughout the book. Despite the fact that the inclusion of underage drinking and drug use in the novel provides an argument for its banning, The Catcher in the Rye should not be a banned book because it is wrong in general for books to become banned, the language in the book is not introducing many new explicit terms to readers because of the culture surrounding today’s high schools, and the ideas portrayed in The Catcher in the Rye are important for students to learn and understand.
In today’s world and culture, many schools see it fit to ban certain books that they see depict views that their students should not be learning. This, however, portrays the idea that one person or a group of people have the utmost authority to limit

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