The history of banned books might easily be misconstrued as a history of important books — so many organizations, private and public, have targeted influential books for censorship that it may seem as though a book must be banned to make it onto a list of classic literature. Luckily, the bans are mostly ineffective and limited in their longevity. Let’s review some of the most ridiculous reasons that classic books were ever banned, so we might laugh at this ineffectual bit of literary history.
1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Since its immediate success upon its release in 1951, J.D. Salinger’s famous character study of disaffected boarding school dropout, Holden Caulfield, has been a frequent target of censorship. An Oklahoma school board fired a teacher for assigning the book to students. An Ohio community organization petitioned to ban the book from local schools, on the grounds that it was “anti-white.” The book, which contains one scene wherein Caulfield hires a prostitute but tries only to talk to and connect with her, was banned by one library for violating codes concerning “excess vulgar language, sexual scenes, things concerning moral issues, excessive violence and anything dealing with the occult.”
2. 1984 by George Orwell
Source: Signet Classic via Amazon
George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece about a brutally efficient surveillance society was viewed as a veiled attack on the policies of Stalin’s regime in the USSR. Predictably, the book was banned in Russia for 40 years for its anti-communist sentiments. However, oddly enough, the book was banned in 1981 by parents in Jackson County, Florida for being pro-communist. It seems that someone didn’t read the book, which chronicles the horrifying implications of a totalitarian government regime that systematically robs citizens of their free will.
3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Source: Faber and Faber via Amazon
William Golding’s classic, a failure upon its initial 1954 publication before gaining its current status as a classroom staple in the ’60s, follows a group of upper-class school children who form a primitive society after crash-landing on a deserted island. Lord of the Flies has been banned by organizations time and time again. For example, in 1981, a North Carolina high school criticized the book for being “demoralizing, in that it implies that man is little more than an animal.” So, essentially, Lord of the Flies is wrong for having a powerful, thought-provoking theme. The book has been challenged further in schools in Arizona, Texas, South Dakota, Iowa, New York, and Florida.
4. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Source: Yearling via Amazon
Judy Blume’s novel about the adolescent struggles of a preteen girl is one of the definitive coming-of-age texts in American literature, but its frank discussion of budding sexuality and womanhood has ruffled many feathers since its publication in the ’70s. Across the country, parents, schools, and other organizations have protested Blume’s book for its “two themes of sex and anti-Christian behavior” and its “profane, immoral, and offensive” content. Strange criticisms for a book that does little worse than using honesty to help children understand the struggles and changes that occur during the teenage years.
5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Source: Bantam via Amazon
Yes, the diary of a budding Jewish girl hiding from the Third Reich is one of the 20th century’s most oft-challenged books. Critics from various nations have alleged that Anne Frank never existed, and the book was written by an adult along with Anne’s father, Otto Frank, as a piece of pro-Jewish propaganda. In the U.S., it was banned for certain “sexually offensive” passages and on the grounds that it might be “depressing” for young readers — because we should focus on happy books to help us learn about the Holocaust!
6. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Source: Pan Macmillan via Amazon
Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s novel about a girl who stumbles upon a fantastical world has been banned for a myriad of reasons, each more ridiculous than the last. U.S. officials banned it in the ’60s because its mushroom and hookah imagery reflected the drug culture of that era. Later, in the ’90s, it was banned in New Hampshire for promoting “sexual fantasies and masturbation.” Chinese officials in the ’30s perceived another problem, in the book’s depiction of talking animals, considering it “disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.”
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Source: Simon & Schuster via Amazon
This dystopian science-fiction novel about a future where ideas are repressed and all books are illegal has been banned repeatedly since its 1953 publication, possibly for the sake of rich irony. Parents in Mississippi once got the book removed from a required reading list because of its use of the words “God damn.” Others have criticized the book for its “questionable themes,” which may be the vaguest excuse for banning a book ever conceived. For its anti-government advocacy, the book remains a controversial, regularly challenged mainstay on required reading lists.
8. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Handford
Source: Candlewick via Amazon
What’s there to be offended about in a Where’s Waldo? book, you ask? Some claim the apparently innocent images of sprawling cartoon scenes, wherein young readers are challenged to find the title character, also contain “inappropriate and seditious hidden imagery.” In the 1987 edition of the series, according to the Banned Books website, someone pointed to an inappropriate inclusion:
The infamous charge was in reference to a page containing a frenzied beach scene in which a woman tanning without her bikini top is being splashed on the back with water and the dots in the sand creating the impression that her nipple is erect. The scene is made all-the-more controversial due to the image of two men in a somewhat compromising position to the upper left of the topless sunbather. One of the men happens to be black, prompting those who take offense to the apparently homosexual situation to also call foul with issues of interracial coupling.
Follow Jeff Rindskopf on Twitter @jrindskopf