michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 10, 2008 14:14:40 GMT 4
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism by Ron SuskindHarperCollins, $27.95 Here's a brand spanking new book for you to consider from author, Ron Suskind, which is causing quite a political stir, particularly within the White House. 'Suskind also wrote two New York Times bestsellers critical of the Bush administration – “The Price of Loyalty” (2004), which featured extensive comments by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and “The One Percent Doctrine” (2006).'
Check it out and please stay tuned for future postings here as Banned Books Week begins next month.....MichelleBook says White House ordered forgeryBy: Mike Allen August 5, 2008 11:51 AM EST A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war. The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.” The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’” The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes. "Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'" According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti. “The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.” The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: “The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd.” The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: "Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence." Before “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,” Suskind wrote two New York Times bestsellers critical of the Bush administration – “The Price of Loyalty” (2004), which featured extensive comments by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and “The One Percent Doctrine” (2006). Suskind writes in his new book that the order to create the letter was written on “creamy White House stationery.” The book suggests that the letter was subsequently created by the CIA and delivered to Iraq, but does not say how. The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense. Suskind writes that the White House had “ignored the Iraq intelligence chief’s accurate disclosure that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion. “They secretly resettled him in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,” the book says. Suskind writes that the forgery “operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with” a statute saying the CIA may not conduct covert operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media.” “It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.” Habbush is still listed as wanted on a State Department website designed to help combat international terrorism, with the notation: “Up to $1 Million Reward.” Former CIA Director George J. Tenet says about the supposed forgery, in a statement: “There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from CIA ever involved in any such effort.” NBC’s David Gregory reported on “Today” that Habbush passed his information in “secret meetings with British intelligence.” Tenet says about Habbush in the statement: “In fact, the source in question failed to persuade his British interlocutors that he had anything new to offer by way of intelligence, concessions, or negotiations with regard to the Iraq crisis and the British – on their own – elected to break off contact with him. “There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD – but our foreign intelligence colleagues and we assessed that these individuals were parroting the Ba’ath party line and trying to delay any coalition attack. The particular source that Suskind cites offered no evidence to back up his assertion and acted in an evasive and unconvincing manner.” Asked about Tenet's statement by Meredith Vieira on “Today,” Suskind said it’s “part of George’s memory issue.” “By placing so much on its secret ledger,” Suskind writes in his final chapter, “the administration profoundly altered basic democratic ideals of accountability and informed consent.” The book (HarperCollins, $27.95) was not supposed to be publicly available until Tuesday, but Politico purchased a copy Monday night at a Washington bookstore. Suskind, an engaging and confident Washingtonian, writes that the book was “one tough project.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he worked from 1993 to 2000. The White House said Suskind received no formal cooperation. He writes in the acknowledgments section at the end of the book: “It should be noted that the intelligence sources who are quoted in this book in no way disclosed any classified information. None crossed the line.” Among the 415-page book’s other highlights: --John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, was frustrated by what Suskind describes as the “tendency of the White House to ignore advice it didn’t want to hear – advice that contradicted its willed certainty, political judgments, or rigid message strategies.” And Suskind writes that the administration “did not want to hear the word insurgency.” --In the first days of his presidency, Bush rejected advice from the CIA to wiretap Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2001 in Vienna, where he was staying in a hotel where the CIA had a listening device planted in the wall of the presidential suite, in need only of a battery change. The CIA said that if the surveillance were discovered, Putin’s respect for Bush would be heightened. But Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, advised that it was “too risky, it might be discovered,” Suskind writes. Bush decided against if as “a gut decision” based on what he thought was a friendship based on several conversations, including during the presidential campaign. The CIA had warned him that Putin “was a trained KGB agent … [who] wants you to think he’s your friend.” --Suskind reports that Bush initially told Cheney he had to "‘step back’ in large meetings when they were together, like those at the NSC [National Security Council], because people were addressing and deferring to Cheney. Cheney said he understood, that he’d mostly just take notes at the big tables and then he and Bush would meet privately, frequently, to discuss options and action.” --Suskind contends Cheney established “deniability” for Bush as part of the vice president’s “complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president.” “After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive. “They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.” --Suskind is acidly derisive of Bush, saying that he initially lost his “nerve” on 9/11, regaining it when he grabbed the Ground Zero bullhorn. Suskind says Bush’s 9 p.m. Oval Office address on the fifth anniversary was “well along in petulance, seasoned by a touch of self-defensiveness.” “Moving on its own natural arc, the country is in the process of leaving Bush – his bullying impulse fused, permanently, with satisfying vengeance – in the scattering ashes of 9/11,” Suskind writes. “The high purpose his angry words carried after the attacks, and in two elections since, is dissolving with each passing minute.” --Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail. © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC Source:dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=90E15887-3048-5C12-00F2EE5A4BEEF1B8
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Sept 29, 2008 10:22:39 GMT 4
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! September 27 through October 4, 2008Welcome once again, dear reader, to Fountainhead Forum's 2008 celebration of Banned Books Week. This week, I will be posting various articles and bits of information on censorship, banned books and the most challenged books. I plan to put emphasis on some of my favorite literature and reading in general.
If you look around the FH Forum and note the various topics listed, you will see that I am consumed by the problems and grim social conditions which beset our world. One could say that I am a product of my reading and that my reading set me on the path which brought me to the FH Forum long before its conception.
For me, books were the prime inculcators of my idealism. It was in books that I found the voices of my prophets and spiritual advisors. As I read lists of banned and challenged books, I find a multitude of the very same books which stirred in me the voice of reason and prodded me forward to enlightened thinking.
Out of all of the books that get banned in the United States, most books are ones parents or other concerned citizens want taken out of schools, libraries, or book stores because they think the books contain material not appropriate for the children they're being marketed to or who are assigned to read them. Today, we look at three books recently banned at the high school level. These books, along with their authors, provided me with memorable reading. Included, after the articles on this, are details on the themes these books present. Here I wish to show issues and the discussion of such issues that children miss out on when great works of literature are withheld from them. Our children would be poorer without thought provoking fiction provided by men and women of letters.
Sincerely, MichelleOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Native Son by Richard Wright, and Brave New World by Alodus Huxley were pulled from high school classrooms in Appling County, GA, following complaints by a local minister who objected to language and "mature content" in the books. Students can check the books out of the district's Media Center only if they have signed written permission. NCAC, ABFFE, and the ACLU of Georgia sent a letter to the school board opposing the ban.Joint Letter to Appling County Board of Ed. Urging Return of Censored Classics, Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, and Native Son[/b] Board of Education Appling County Schools 249 Blackshear Highway Baxley, GA 31513 July 16, 2008 Dear Members of the Board of Education: We write to encourage you to reconsider your decision to remove the books, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Native Son by Richard Wright, and Brave New World by Alodus Huxley, from classrooms in Appling County Schools. We understand that your action was taken in response to a complaint filed by a local minister objecting to language in Of Mice and Men and Native Son, and that two committees of educators reviewed the books and recommended that they be kept in high school classrooms. We also understand that the board banned Brave New World without first going through the normal complaint procedures, in violation of district policy. All three books are highly acclaimed, seminal works of American fiction and have long been used for instruction in schools across the country. If these books are deemed “unsuitable,” the same could be said of a vast body of important literature, including works by Shakespeare, major religious texts such as the Bible, the works of Flaubert, Joyce, Faulkner, and Twain, contemporary books such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Beloved, and many of the texts regularly assigned in high schools throughout the State of Georgia. As these examples suggest, any attempt "to eliminate everything that is objectionable...will leave public schools in shreds. Nothing but educational confusion and a discrediting of the public school system can result...." McCollum v. Board of Educ. (1948) (Jackson, J. concurring). Indeed, the school district puts all students at an educational disadvantage, and puts college-bound students at a particular disadvantage, by not introducing them to literature of this sort in high school. The task of selecting readings for the curriculum properly belongs to professional educators. Parents may be equipped to make choices for their own children, and religious leaders may be equipped to make recommendations to their congregants, but, no matter how well-intentioned, they simply are not equipped to make decisions that address the needs of the entire student body. Without questioning the sincerity of those who object to the books, their views are not shared by all, and they have no right to impose those views on others or to demand that the educational program reflect their personal preferences. As many courts have observed, public schools have the obligation to "administer school curricula responsive to the overall educational needs of the community and its children." Leebaert v. Harrington, 332 F.3d 134, 141 (2d Cir. 2003). Thus, no parent has the right "to tell a public school what his or her child will and will not be taught." Id. Any other rule would put schools in the untenable position of having "to cater a curriculum for each student whose parents had genuine moral disagreements with the school's choice of subject matter." Brown v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions, Inc., 68 F.3d 525, 534 (1st Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1159 (1996). See also Swanson v. Guthrie Indep. School Dist., 135 F.3d 694, 699 (10th Cir. 1998); Littlefield v. Forney Indep. School, 268 F.3d 275, 291 (5th Cir. 2001). The practical effect of acceding to any individual request to censor materials will be to invite others to demand changes in the curriculum to reflect their beliefs and to leave school officials vulnerable to multiple, possibly conflicting, demands. In this case, the school board has banned all three books against the advice of professional educators and on the basis of the complaint of a local church leader – moreover, one who has no children in the school. Meanwhile, parents who do have students in the class are eager for their students to study these books and have signed permission slips to express their support of the material. No pedagogical or educational rationale has been advanced for the board’s decision, which appears to rest solely on the desire to accommodate the demands of a religious leader. As such, it is constitutionally suspect and exposes the board to potential legal liability. We strongly urge you to return Of Mice and Men, Native Son, and Brave New World to Appling County classrooms. If we can be of assistance in this matter, please do not hesitate to contact us. Sincerely, Joan Bertin Executive Director National Coalition Against Censorship Chris Finan President American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression Chara Fisher Jackson ACLU of Georgia Source: www.ncac.org/literature/20090716~GA~Joint_Letter_to_Applling_County_Board_of_Ed_Urging_Return_of_Censored_Classics.cfmAppling High School English Department Head, Mary Ann Ellis, speaks out against the books' removal.
Georgia English teacher speaks out against censorship in her School The following Op-ed was written by Mary Ann Ellis, the English Department Head at Appling High School, in response to the Appling County School Board's decision to remove three classic texts from the classroom. The Article first appeared in the Baxley News-Banner.On November 19, 2007, the Appling County School Board set a dangerous precedent by removing books from the classroom. The board betrayed not only me and the English Department, but our students and their parents as well. Back in June, a local minister challenged two classics—Of Mice and Men and Native Son—which have been taught here for decades; my husband read them back in the sixties. The complaint of profanity spurred heated debate before the school board, which told the minister that board procedure required a formal written complaint. For three weeks after the formal complaint came, two committees of twenty respected educators read (a key word here) these two books, discussed them, and found them appropriate for high school students. Nonetheless, when the minister returned to the board, its members ignored the recommendation of the committees and voted unanimously to take the books out of the classroom. Suddenly and insidiously, into the controversy came another book, Brave New World. This classic had been added to the list in a daytime meeting while I and most people were working. A deluge of calls came from parents. “How did Brave New World get on their list? I want my child to study this book,” the parents said. “If I give permission, it’ll be fine, right?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ll go ask.” On November 5, I approached the board for clarification and was told I could teach any of the books if I had 100 per cent parental permission. Back at school, my senior college preparatory class, many of which are already eighteen--old enough to fight for this country, to get into R rated movies, etc.--prepared to read Brave New World. They brought me parental permission forms and enthusiasm. Before we actually started reading the book, the ministers struck again, and on November 19, this same board took away the parents’ rights to decide for their children. They summarily dismissed the fact that one hundred per cent of the parents said, “Yes.” The school board said, “No.” When the discussions first began, the ministers unwaveringly insisted that parents be given more responsibility, more input. Now a mere six months later and on the advice of two ministers who have not read the books and who have no children in school, the board has usurped parental authority No longer can Appling County college prep students study in the classroom these three classics which appear on national exams such as the Advanced Placement Exam and the SAT. These classics are no longer available to our Honors English students or even to our most advanced students, the AP British Literature Class. Already our students leave home at a disadvantage because so few advanced classes are available to them in this small rural area; the board just saddled them with another handicap. Granted, the students can still check out the books, but without help, most of them cannot understand the multiple levels of meaning. These books require good teaching to help the students discover their underlying meanings and to prepare them to apply that skill to other books. The students need my expertise, which the board forbade me to give. Ironically enough, I was hired for that very expertise, which has served my students well for the last twenty-three years. Can I do my job without these books? I’ll certainly do my best. I’ll encourage them to read the banned books, and the very fact that people wanted them banned will engender curiosity. I, of course, will not teach them in class because the board, my official employer, has ordered me not to. This situation is a bit like farming. A good farmer can grow crops if someone takes away his tractor, but his progress is set back many years when his tools are limited. Can he compete with all the farmers with tractors? In the English Department, we’ve been set back at least fifty years. We’re now working with hoes and shovels. Our students are the ones who’ve truly been betrayed by the very board responsible for giving them the best education available. Somewhere down the road when the ministers bring three more books and three more and Shakespeare, what will happen then? Our students will leave this county unprepared for Mercer, UGA, Harvard, GSU. Not because of the ministers, mind you. No, they can thank their very own Appling County Board of Education. Mary Ann Ellis Source: ncac.org/literature/related/oped_betrayed.cfmTHEMESOf Mice and Men John SteinbeckSteinbeck seems to have several possible themes in mind in Of Mice and Men. Some of these themes are related to the story itself and some to the idea that the book is an allegory filled with symbolic figures rather than a narration about real people. As you read the book, decide which themes seem the most appropriate. You should be able to back up your opinions with evidence from the book. THE AMERICAN DREAM A popular theme in modern American literature is known as The American Dream. This dream involves a longing for several of the following: wealth, independence, land, good looks, popularity or fame, and self-determination. For George, the dream is to be able to have a place of his own and be his own boss. He doesn't want to work hard or make a lot of money, just enough to be free to run his own life. For Lennie, the dream is to have a piece of responsibility, the rabbits he will tend, and a sense of self- worth. Candy is looking for security in his old age and a feeling of belonging somewhere. Crooks is looking for the self-respect he felt his father had when he was a landowner. Curley's wife is looking "to make something of herself," to have nice clothes, and to have to have pictures taken of her. The American Dream is almost never achieved. Even the rich and famous, such as the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, find that their lives are shallow. and the working-class people, such as Biff and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, end up disillusioned or destroy themselves. George and Lennie have a lot in common with the Lomans. They try to deny their small place in the world, but their American Dream is always a month and a hundred dollars away. LONELINESS LONELINESS and rootlessness haunt the characters in Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck seems to be saying that "the little man" is doomed to a life of isolation and cannot change his status. Nearly everyone in the book is a loner, and all are suspicious of George and Lennie's companionship. What creates this loneliness? Poverty is one element. Only Candy seems to have any money in the bank, and his savings are the result of losing his hand. Discrimination because of old age, race, or sex also isolates several of the characters. And the lack of a true home also creates loneliness for many of them. Steinbeck presents several symbols of this loneliness. George continually plays solitaire when Lennie isn't around. Curley's wife keeps wandering around the ranch, and Curley is always one step behind as he searches for her. Candy's dog is taken from him and killed. Crooks lives in an isolated shack. Most of the characters seem to feel out of place wherever they are. THE COMMON MANSteinbeck's focus in Of Mice and Men is on a group of relatively unimportant people. And the author never tries to make them seem more important than they are. They are just common men who will always be fairly anonymous and powerless. The title of the book is not even taken from the Bible or another major work. It comes from a short poem by Robert Burns with the long title, "To a Mouse On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plow, November, 1785." According to the poem: "The best laid schemes o' mice and men / Gang aft a-gley [often go astray], / And lea'e us nought but grief and pain, / For promised joy." Steinbeck is sensitive to the needs and feelings of the common people in the novel, but he is not hopeful for the success of their "best laid schemes." NATURALISM OR REALISM Closely related to the common man theme is Steinbeck's creation of a naturalistic or realistic atmosphere. Steinbeck is not a romantic who makes a big deal about people or natural wonders. Like a scientist, he observes things as they are and sees people as just a small part of the overall natural world. A POLITICAL STATEMENTSome readers wonder if Steinbeck is trying to make a political statement in the novel. Is he attacking the forces that have doomed the characters to their sad lives? This argument doesn't seem to hold up well. No highly placed figures are attacked in the book. The only leader is the boss, and he is pictured as a basically nice guy. Even in his more political books- The Grapes of Wrath, about migrant workers, and In Dubious Battle, about unions and strikes- Steinbeck never seems to be creating propaganda or calling for an overthrow of the system. Steinbeck is more of an observer than a rabble-rouser. The feeling the reader gets is sadness rather than anger. THE SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAILOne of Steinbeck's favorite books was Le Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Mallory's retelling of the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the King Arthur legends play a part in several of Steinbeck's works. One of those legends was Sir Galahad's search for the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus was said to have drunk. Finding the Grail will cause all sins to be forgiven, according to the knights. Throughout literature, the Grail serves as a symbol of that which is sought but can never be possessed. Galahad was the only knight pure enough to find and touch the Grail, but once he touched it, he died and his spirit went to heaven. George and Lennie's search for a place to live off the fat of the land is a kind of search for the Grail. And, like true Knights of the Round Table, they possess such qualities as loyalty and the creation of a bond between them. But no one but Sir Galahad ever succeeded in this quest. Coincidentally, many of the others found their relationships and quests destroyed by a woman, just as George and Lennie do. THE STORY OF CAIN AND ABELThe connections between George and Lennie and Cain and Abel of Genesis have already been discussed in The Characters section of this guide. One important critic, Peter Lisca, has pointed out some other interesting parallels between the two stories. Lisca notes that many of the characters' names in Of Mice and Men start with the letter C- Curley, Candy, Crooks, Curley's wife. They are all descendants of Cain, people doomed to live in isolation in a fallen world. No character's name starts with A because there were no descendants of Abel. © Copyright 1984 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc.Native Son Richard WrightMAJOR THEMES RACISM Native Son is an indictment of racism. Racism affects Bigger's life at home, at the Daltons, and in police custody. The Thomases must live in their rat-infested apartment partly because no one will rent to blacks in any other section of town. At the same time, blacks are charged higher rents than whites. When Bigger goes to the movies, one of the films portrays blacks as jungle savages. After his arrest, Bigger finds that the press and the public are using racial stereotypes to portray him as a sex criminal and brutal mass murderer. And despite their best intentions, even the liberal Daltons and the radical Jan and Mary act toward Bigger in a racist manner by failing to recognize him as an individual. BLACK RAGE Bigger Thomas is angry. You first see him in conflict with his mother and sister. Later he turns in fury on one of his best friends, Gus. Jan and Mary also enrage him. He frequently thinks of "blotting out" the people around him. And some of his moments of greatest exhilaration occur when he vents his hostility in violence. Bigger's anger seems to be closely connected to his sense of racial identity. He is often furious at other blacks for their passive responses to the limitations placed on their lives by whites. And he is frequently enraged at whites for making him feel ashamed and self-conscious. Does Wright share and approve of Bigger's fury or does he present it as a tragedy? Your answer to this question will depend on whose views you think Wright shares. By narrating the novel from Bigger's point of view, Wright draws you into sympathy with Bigger. You can also argue, however, that Wright identifies more with Boris Max, who seems shocked and upset by Bigger's attitude toward violence. What is your response to Bigger's fury? RELIGION Although his mother is religious, Bigger decides that she is blind to the realities of her life. He sees his mother's need for religion as parallel to Bessie's for whiskey. Both, he thinks, are passive, escapist responses to racist conditions. At the end of the novel, Reverend Hammond tries to convince Bigger to pray. But Bigger appears to reject the black church, and presumably all religion, when he throws away the crucifix given him by Reverend Hammond. Bigger identifies the crucifix with the burning cross of the Ku Klux Klan. Wright seems to be sharply critical of the black religious establishment and its representative, Reverend Hammond, who even objects to Jan's suggestion that Bigger try to fight back and save his life. You might argue, however, that Bigger's rejection of the cross and of religion is not necessarily the author's rejection. Do you find the views of either Reverend Hammond or Mrs. Thomas appealing? Or do you agree with Bigger's repudiation of them? COMMUNISM AND RADICAL POLITICAL IDEAS Jan Erlone is a Communist, Mary Dalton is a Communist sympathizer, and Boris Max is a lawyer who works closely with causes supported by Communists. Even before any of these characters appears in the novel, Bigger has seen a movie that portrays a Communist as a maniacal bomb thrower. Native Son contrasts the media image of Communists with Communist characters who are decent, warm human beings. Some readers think Wright's portrayal of his Communist characters is too idealized. On the other hand, Wright also shows that neither Jan nor Mary understands Bigger and that, despite their professed concern for black people, neither can relate to a black man as an individual human being. As a result, you might maintain that the novel criticizes Communists even while portraying them as victims of unfair stereotyping. In Book Three, Wright uses Boris Max to present a radical social critique. Max argues before the judge that Bigger's violence is a predictable response to society's racism, which is the real criminal. Max also tells Bigger that young unemployed blacks like him should work with other blacks and with trade unions and radical movements. Many readers think that Max speaks for Wright and that Max's arguments are those of the Communist Party of Wright's time. You might question whether Max ever really understands Bigger, however. If you feel he doesn't, this limitation might be evidence that he isn't a completely reliable spokesman for Wright. Do you agree with any of Max's arguments? DETERMINISM AND FREEDOMBigger feels happier and freer after he kills Mary. His violence against a white woman gives him a sense of power. At the end of Native Son, he even implies that his killings expressed his deepest self. You could argue that through his violent rebellion, Bigger has transcended or risen above the passivity of the other black characters. From this point of view, Bigger's violence is an assertion of his freedom and a rebellion against society's constraints. But Bigger's lawyer Boris Max suggests that Bigger is only a passive product of his society. Bigger's violence, he says, is a reflex created by the oppressive conditions of his life. From this viewpoint, Bigger is at least as blind, passive, and self-destructive as the novel's other black characters, and perhaps even more so. MINOR THEMES The relationship between men and women is another of the themes of Native Son. Bigger's affair with Bessie is affected by the difficult conditions of their lives. Each uses the other as a means of escape, but genuine love between them doesn't seem possible. Bigger is attracted to Mary, and she may be attracted to him, too, but the racial barrier prevents Mary from even understanding Bigger and makes Bigger fear and hate Mary. Another theme is Wright's critique of the criminal justice system in the U.S. Wright suggests that the court's verdict is predictable and perhaps even that the court is carrying out the will of the mob. Alienation (isolation) is an additional theme of Native Son. Bigger is isolated from whites and blacks alike, and his acts of self-assertion cut him off from humanity even further. Black family life is another of the novel's concerns. Bigger's father was the victim of a Southern lynch mob. And Bigger's family lives in such crowded conditions that they get on each other's nerves. Finally the novel considers media stereotyping. Both the movies and the newspapers stereotype minorities, Communists, rich people, and criminals. © Copyright 1986 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc. Brave New World Aldous HuxleyThis novel is about a Utopia, an ideal state- a bad ideal state. It is therefore a novel about ideas, and its themes are as important as its plot. They will be studied in depth in the chapter-by-chapter discussion of the book. Most are expressed as fundamental principles of the Utopia, the brave new world. Some come to light when one character, a Savage raised on an Indian reservation, confronts that world. As you find the themes, try to think not only about what they say about Huxley's Utopia, but also about Huxley's real world- and your own. COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY- VERSUS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM Community, Identity, Stability is the motto of the World State. It lists the Utopia's prime goals. Community is in part a result of identity and stability. It is also achieved through a religion that satirizes Christianity- a religion that encourages people to reach solidarity through sexual orgy. And it is achieved by organizing life so that a person is almost never alone. Identity is in large part the result of genetic engineering. Society is divided into five classes or castes, hereditary social groups. In the lower three classes, people are cloned in order to produce up to 96 identical "twins." Identity is also achieved by teaching everyone to conform, so that someone who has or feels more than a minimum of individuality is made to feel different, odd, almost an outcast. Stability is the third of the three goals, but it is the one the characters mention most often- the reason for designing society this way. The desire for stability, for instance, requires the production of large numbers of genetically identical "individuals," because people who are exactly the same are less likely to come into conflict. Stability means minimizing conflict, risk, and change. SCIENCE AS A MEANS OF CONTROL Brave New World is not only a Utopian book, it is also a science-fiction novel. But it does not predict much about science in general. Its theme "is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals," Huxley said in the Foreword he wrote in 1946, 15 years after he wrote the book. He did not focus on physical sciences like nuclear physics, though even in 1931 he knew that the production of nuclear energy (and weapons) was probable. He was more worried about dangers that appeared more obvious at that time- the possible misuse of biology, physiology, and psychology to achieve community, identity, and stability. Ironically, it becomes clear at the end of the book that the World State's complete control over human activity destroys even the scientific progress that gained it such control. THE THREAT OF GENETIC ENGINEERING Genetic engineering is a term that has come into use in recent years as scientists have learned to manipulate RNA and DNA, the proteins in every cell that determine the basic inherited characteristics of life. Huxley didn't use the phrase but he describes genetic engineering when he explains how his new world breeds prescribed numbers of humans artificially for specified qualities. THE MISUSE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING Every human being in the new world is conditioned to fit society's needs- to like the work he will have to do. Human embryos do not grow inside their mothers' wombs but in bottles. Biological or physiological conditioning consists of adding chemicals or spinning the bottles to prepare the embryos for the levels of strength, intelligence, and aptitude required for given jobs. After they are "decanted" from the bottles, people are psychologically conditioned, mainly by hypnopaedia or sleep-teaching. You might say that at every stage the society brainwashes its citizens. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CARRIED TO AN EXTREME A society can achieve stability only when everyone is happy, and the brave new world tries hard to ensure that every person is happy. It does its best to eliminate any painful emotion, which means every deep feeling, every passion. It uses genetic engineering and conditioning to ensure that everyone is happy with his or her work. THE CHEAPENING OF SEXUAL PLEASURE Sex is a primary source of happiness. The brave new world makes promiscuity a virtue: you have sex with any partner you want, who wants you- and sooner or later every partner will want you. (As a child, you learn in your sleep that "everyone belongs to everyone else.") In this Utopia, what we think of as true love for one person would lead to neurotic passions and the establishment of family life, both of which would interfere with community and stability. Nobody is allowed to become pregnant because nobody is born, only decanted from a bottle. Many females are born sterile by design; those who are not are trained by "Malthusian drill" to use contraceptives properly. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS THROUGH DRUGS Soma is a drug used by everyone in the brave new world. It calms people and gets them high at the same time, but without hangovers or nasty side effects. The rulers of the brave new world had put 2000 pharmacologists and biochemists to work long before the action of the novel begins; in six years they had perfected the drug. Huxley believed in the possibility of a drug that would enable people to escape from themselves and help them achieve knowledge of God, but he made soma a parody and degradation of that possibility. THE THREAT OF MINDLESS CONSUMPTION AND MINDLESS DIVERSIONS This society offers its members distractions that they must enjoy in common- never alone- because solitude breeds instability. Huxley mentions but never explains sports that use complex equipment whose manufacture keeps the economy rolling- sports called Obstacle Golf and Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. But the chief emblem of Brave New World is the Feelies- movies that feature not only sight and sound but also the sensation of touch, so that when people watch a couple making love on a bearskin rug, they can feel every hair of the bear on their own bodies. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY The combination of genetic engineering, bottle-birth, and sexual promiscuity means there is no monogamy, marriage, or family. "Mother" and "father" are obscene words that may be used scientifically on rare, carefully chosen occasions to label ancient sources of psychological problems. THE DENIAL OF DEATH The brave new world insists that death is a natural and not unpleasant process. There is no old age or visible senility. Children are conditioned at hospitals for the dying and given sweets to eat when they hear of death occurring. This conditioning does not- as it might- prepare people to cope with the death of a loved one or with their own mortality. It eliminates the painful emotions of grief and loss, and the spiritual significance of death, which Huxley made increasingly important in his later novels. THE OPPRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Some characters in Brave New World differ from the norm. Bernard is small for an Alpha and fond of solitude; Helmholtz, though seemingly "every centimetre an Alpha-Plus," knows he is too intelligent for the work he performs; John the Savage, genetically a member of the World State, has never been properly conditioned to become a citizen of it. Even the Controller, Mustapha Mond, stands apart because of his leadership abilities. Yet in each case these differences are crushed: Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled; John commits suicide; and the Mond stifles his own individuality in exchange for the power he wields as Controller. What does this say about Huxley's Utopia? WHAT DOES SUCH A SYSTEM COST? This Utopia has a good side: there is no war or poverty, little disease or social unrest. But Huxley keeps asking, what does society have to pay for these benefits? The price, he makes clear, is high. The first clue is in the epigraph, the quotation at the front of the book. It is in French, but written by a Russian, Nicolas Berdiaeff. It says, "Utopias appear to be much easier to realize than one formerly believed. We currently face a question that would otherwise fill us with anguish: How to avoid their becoming definitively real?" By the time you hear the conversation between the Controller, one of the men who runs the new world, and John, the Savage, you've learned that citizens of this Utopia must give up love, family, science, art, religion, and history. At the end of the book, John commits suicide and you see that the price of this brave new world is fatally high. © Copyright 1985 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc. Note From Michelle: I just finished reading and discussing Brave New World with my book group. This is the second time I read it; the first time as an adult.
When John the Savage quotes lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest, Huxley expects the reader to know that even if the character Bernard doesn't. They are spoken by Miranda, the innocent daughter of Prospero, a deposed duke and functioning magician. She has grown up on a desert island where she has known only two spirits and one human being, her father. She falls in love with a handsome young nobleman who has been shipwrecked on their island, and then meets his equally gracious father and friends, and she says: "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it."
John doesn't intend to be ironic when he uses the lines as he contemplates plunging into his new world, but Huxley does. Bernard enables you to see the irony, and Huxley's true feelings about his bad Utopia, when he says to John, "Hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?"
In our current reality, many of the 'wonders' and social 'ideals' [?!] in Huxley's bad Utopia [or some version of them] are now available and in use; so generously served up to us from the corporate fascism which rules our world....It is also with irony that I say, "O brave new world, that has such people in it!"
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Sept 30, 2008 11:13:40 GMT 4
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! September 27 through October 4, 2008 Second Posting 1 of 2Welcome to our 2nd post of Banned Books Week, 2008. First, we look at the 10 most challenged books of last year and why they were challenged. Following that, Banned and/or Challenged Novels of the 20th Century, with emphasis on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
As I looked over the list of novels from the 20th Century, I couldn't help but reflect on the 'Grundyism' [gruhn-dee-iz-uhm –noun 1. a prudish adherence to conventionality, esp. in personal behavior. 2. (lowercase) an instance of such prudishness.] which is still prevalent in society. I have read every one of these novels [also most on the 2007 challenged list] and consider myself better off for doing so.
Celebrate your right to read this week by choosing a novel from the list!
MichelleFrequently Challenged BooksEach year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles a list of the top ten most frequently challenged books. To ensure that we include all challenges, we wait until the very end of the year to compile the information. You can expect each year's list to appear in February of the following year at the latest.
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom does not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges. Research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported.The most frequently challenged books of 2007 The following books were the most frequently challenged in 2007:The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 420 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each reported, four or five remain unreported.The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2007” reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles: 1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group 2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence 3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language 4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman Reasons: Religious Viewpoint 5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain Reasons: Racism 6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, 7) "TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 8) "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou Reasons: Sexually Explicit 9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit 10) "The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group Off the list this year, are two books by author Toni Morrison. "The Bluest Eye" and "Beloved," both challenged for sexual content and offensive language. The most frequently challenged authors of 20071) Robert Cormier 2) Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson 3) Mark Twain 4) Toni Morrison 5) Philip Pullman 6) Kevin Henkes 7) Lois Lowry 8) Chris Crutcher 9) Lauren Myracle 10) Joann Sfar How is the list of most challenged books tabulated?The American Library Association (ALA) collects information from two sources: newspapers and reports submitted by individuals, some of whom use the Challenge Database Form. All challenges are compiled into a database. Reports of challenges culled from newspapers across the country are compiled in the bimonthly Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom (published by the ALA, $40 per year); those reports are then compiled in the Banned Books Week Resource Guide. Challenges reported to the ALA by individuals are kept confidential. In these cases, ALA will release only the title of the book being challenged, the state and the type of institution (school, public library). The name of the institution and its town will not be disclosed. From: www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/frequentlychallengedbooks.cfm#tmfcbo2007*************** Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th CenturySee also Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century from the ALA Public Information Office (PIO). For more information on the reasons why these books and others were banned or challenged, contact OIF at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4223.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott FitzgeraldChallenged at the Baptist College in Charleston, SC (1987) because of "language and sexual references in the book." The Catcher in the Rye, JD SalingerSince its publication, this title has been a favorite target of censors. In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Okla. was fired for assigning the book to an eleventh grade English class.The teacher appealed and was reinstated by the school board, but the book was removed from use in the school. In 1963, a delegation of parents of high school students in Columbus, Ohio, asked the school board to ban the novel for being "anti white" and "obscene." The school board refused the request. Removed from the Selinsgrove, Pa. suggested reading list (1975). Based on parents' objections to the language and content of the book, the school board voted 5 4 to ban the book.The book was later reinstated in the curriculum when the board learned that the vote was illegal because they needed a two thirds vote for removal of the text. Challenged as an assignment in an American literature class in Pittsgrove, NJ. (1977). After months of controversy, the board ruled that the novel could be read in the advanced placement class, but they gave parents the right to decide whether or not their children would read it. Removed from the Issaquah,Wash. Optional High School reading list (1978). Removed from the required reading list in Middleville, Mich. (1979). Removed from the Jackson Milton school libraries in North Jackson, Ohio (1980). Removed from two Anniston, Ala. high school libraries (1982), but later reinstated on a restrictive basis. Removed from the school libraries in Morris, Manitoba (1982) along with two other books because they violate the committee's guidelines covering "excess vulgar language, sexual scenes, things concerning moral issues, excessive violence, and anything dealing with the occult:" Challenged at the Libby, Mont. High School (1983) due to the "book's contents:" Challenged, but retained for use in select English classes at New Richmond, Wis. (1994). Banned from English classes at the Freeport High School in De Funiak Springs, Fla. (1985) because it is "unacceptable" and "obscene." Removed from the required reading list of a Medicine Bow, Wyo. Senior High School English class (1986) because of sexual references and profanity in the book. Banned from a required sophomore English reading list at the Napoleon, N.Dak. High School (1987) after parents and the local Knights of Columbus chapter complained about its profanity and sexual references. Challenged at the Linton Stockton, Ind. High School (1988) because the book is "blasphemous and undermines morality." Banned from the classrooms in Boron, Calif High School (1989) because the book contains profanity. Challenged at the GraysIaKe, III. Community High School (1991). Challenged at the Jamaica High School in Sidell, III. (1992) because the book container profanities and depicted premarital sex, alcohol abuse, and prostitution. Challenged in the Waterloo, Iowa schools (1992) and Duval County, Fla. public school libraries (1992) because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled. 'Challenged at the Cumberland Valley Nigh School in Carlisle, Pa. (1992) because of a parent's objections that it contains profanity and is immoral. Challenged, but retained, at the New Richmond, Wis. High School (1994) for use in some English classes. Challenged as required reading in the Corona Norco, Calif. Unified School District (1993) because it is "centered around negative activity. "The book was retained and teachers selected alternatives if students object to Salinger's novel. Challenged as mandatory reading in the Goffstown, N.H. schools (1994) because of the vulgar words used and the sexual exploits experienced in the book. Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, Fla. (1995). Challenged at the Oxford Hills High School in Paris, Maine (1996). A parent objected to the use of the 'F' word:' Challenged, but retained, at the Glynn Academy High School in Brunswick, Ga. (1997). A student objected to the novel's profanity and sexual references. Removed because of profanity and sexual situations from the required reading curriculum of the Marysville, Calif Joint Unified School District (1997). The school superintendent removed it to get it "out of the way so that we didn't have that polarization over a book." Challenged, but retained on the shelves of Limestone County, Ala. school district (2000) despite objections about the book's foul language. Banned, but later reinstated after community protests at the Windsor Forest High School in Savannah, Ga. (2000). The controversy began in early 1999 when a parent complained about sex, violence, and profanity in the book that was part of an advanced placement English class. Removed by a Dorchester District 2 school board member in Summerville, SC (2001) because it "is a filthy, filthy book." Challenged by a Glynn County, Ga. (2001) school board member because of profanity. The novel was retained. Source: "100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature," By Nicholas Karolides. pp. 366 68; Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Nov. 1978, p. 138; Jan. 1980, pp. 6 7; May 1980, p. 5 I ; Mar. 1983, pp. 37 38; July 1983, p. 122; July 1985, p. I 13; Mar. 1987, p. 55; July 1988, p. 123; Jan. 1988, p. 10; Sept. 1988, p. 177; Nov. 1989, pp. 218 19; July 1991, pp. 129 30; May 1992, p. 83;July I 992, pp. I 05, I 26; Jan. I 993, p. 29; Jan. I 994, p. 14, Mar. 1994, pp. 56, 70; May 1994, p. 100; Jan. I 995, p. I 2; Jan. I 996, p. I 4; Nov. I 996, p. 212; May 1997, p. 78; July 1997, p. 96; May 2000, P. 91; July 2000, p. 123; Mar. 2001, p. 76; Nov. 2001, pp. 246-47, 277-78. The Grapes of Wrath, John SteinbeckBurned by the East St. Louis, III. Public Library (1939) and barred from the Buffalo, N.Y Public Library (1939) on the grounds that "vulgar words" were used. Banned in Kansas City, Mo. (1939); Kern County Calif, the scene of Steinbeck's novel, (1939); Ireland ( 1953); Kanawha, Iowa High School classes (1980); and Morris, Manitoba (1982). On Feb. 21, 1973, eleven Turkish book publishers went on trial before an Istanbul martial law tribunal on charges of publishing, possessing and selling books in violation of an order of the Istanbul martial law command. They faced possible sentences of between one month's and six months' imprisonment "for spreading propaganda unfavorable to the state" and the confiscation of their books. Eight booksellers were also on trial with the publishers on the same charge involving the Gropes of Wroth. Challenged in Vernon Verona Sherill, N.Y School District ( I 980); challenged as required reading for Richford,Vt. (1981) High School English students due to the book's language and portrayal of a former minister who recounts how he took advantage of a young woman. Removed from two Anniston, Ala. high school libraries (1982), but later reinstated on a restrictive basis. Challenged at the Cummings High School in Burlington, N.C. (1986) as an optional reading assignment because the "book is full of filth. My son is being raised in a Christian home and this book takes the Lord's name in vain and has all kinds of profanity in it." Although the parent spoke to the press, a formal complaint with the school demanding the book's removal was not filed. Challenged at the Moore County school system in Carthage, N.C. (I 986) because the book contains the phase "God damn:" Challenged in the Greenville, S.C. schools (199 I) because the book uses the name of God and Jesus in a "vain and profane manner along with inappropriate sexual references." Challenged in the Union City Tenn. High School classes (1993). Source: 2000 BBW Resource Guide. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper LeeChallenged in Eden Valley, Minn. (1977) and temporarily banned due to words "damn" and "whore lady" used in the novel. Challenged in the Vernon Verona Sherill, N.Y School District (1980) as a "filthy, trashy novel:" Challenged at the Warren, Ind.Township schools (1981) because the book does "psychological damage to the positive integration process " and "represents institutionalized racism under the guise of good literature:" After unsuccessfully banning Lee's novel, three black parents resigned from the township human relations advisory council. Challenged in the Waukegan, III. School District (1984) because the novel uses the word "nigger." Challenged in the Kansas City, Mo. junior high schools (1985). Challenged at the Park Hill, Mo. Junior High School (1985) because the novel "contains profanity and racial slurs:" Retained on a supplemental eighth grade reading list in the Casa Grande, Ariz. Elementary School District (1985), despite the protests by black parents and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who charged the book was unfit for junior high use. Challenged at the Santa Cruz, Calif. Schools (1995) because of its racial themes. Removed from the Southwood High School Library in Caddo Parish, La. (1995) because the book's language and content were objectionable. Challenged at the Moss Point, Miss. School District (1996) because the novel contains a racial epithet. Banned from the Lindale,Tex. advanced placement English reading list (1996) because the book "conflicted with the values of the community." Challenged by a Glynn County, Ga. (2001) school board member because of profanity. The novel was retained. Returned to the freshman reading list at Muskogee, Okla. High School (2001) despite complaints over the years from black students and parents about racial slurs in the text. Challenged in the Normal, ILL Community High Schools sophomore literature class (2003) as being degrading to African Americans. Challenged at the Stanford Middle School in Durham, N.C. (2004) because the 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel uses the word "nigger." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide. The Color Purple, Alice WalkerChallenged as appropriate reading for Oakland, Calif. High School honors class (1984) due to the work's "sexual and social explicitness" and its "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history and human sexuality." After nine months of haggling and delays, a divided Oakland Board of Education gave formal approval for the book's use. Rejected for purchase by the Hayward, Calif. schools trustee (1985) because of "rough language" and "explicit sex scenes." Removed from the open shelves of the Newport News, Va. school library (1986) because of its "profanity and sexual references" and placed in a special section accessible only to students over the age of 18 or who have written permission from a parent. Challenged at the public libraries of Saginaw, Mich. (1989) because of its language and "explicitness." Challenged as an optional reading assigned in Ten Sleep, Wyo. schools (1990). Challenged as a reading assignment at the New Burn, N.C. High School (1992) because the main character is raped by her stepfather. Banned in the Souderton, Pa. Area School District (1992) as appropriate reading for 10th graders because it is "smut." Challenged on the curricular reading list at Pomperaug High School in Southbury, Conn. (1995) because sexually explicit passages are appropriate high school reading. Retained as an English course reading assignment in the Junction City, Oreg. high school (1995) after a challenge to Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel caused months of controversy. Although an alternative assignment was available, the book was challenged due to "inappropriate language, graphic sexual scenes, and book's negative image of black men." Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, Fla. (1995). Retained on the Round Rock, Tex. Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent. Challenged, but retained, as part of the reading list for Advanced Placement English classes at Northwest High Schools in High Point, N.C. (1996). The book was challenged because it is "sexually graphic and violent." Removed from the Jackson County, W. Va. school libraries (1997) along with sixteen other titles. Challenged, but retained as part of a supplemental reading list at the Shawnee School in Lima, Ohio (1999). Several parents described its content as vulgar and "X-rated." Removed from the Ferguson High School library in Newport News, Va. (1999). Students may request and borrow the book with parental approval. Challenged, along with seventeen other titles in the Fairfax County, VA elementary and secondary libraries (2002), by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. The group contends the books "contain profanity and descriptions of drug abuse, sexually explicit conduct, and torture. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, by Robert P. Doyle. Ulysses, James JoyceBurned in the U.S. (1918), Ireland (1922), Canada (1922), England (1923) and banned in England (1929). Source: 3, p. 66; 5, pp. 328-30; 10, Vol. III, pp. 411-12; 557-58, 645. Beloved, Toni MorrisonChallenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, FL (1995). Retained on the Round Rock, Texas Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent. Challenged by a member of the Madawaska, Maine School Committee (1997) because of the book's language. The 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel has been required reading for the advanced placement English class for six years. Challenged in the Sarasota County, Florida schools (1998) because of sexual material. Source: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. Jan. 1996, p. 14; May 1996, p. 99; Han. 1998, p. 14; July 1998, p. 120. The Lord of the Flies, William GoldingChallenged at the Dallas, TX. Independent School District high school libraries (1974); challenged at the Sully Buttes, S. Dak. High School (1981); challenged at the Owen, N.C. High School (1981) because the book is "demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal"; challenged at the Marana, Ariz. High School (1983) as an inappropriate reading assignment. Challenged at the Olney, Tex. Independent School District (1984) because of "excessive violence and bad language." A committee of the Toronto, Canada Board of Education ruled on June 23, 1988, that the novel is "racist and recommended that it be removed from all schools." Parents and members of the black community complained about a reference to "niggers" in the book and said it denigrates blacks. Challenged in the Waterloo, Iowa schools (1992) because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women and the disabled. Challenged, but retained on the ninth-grade accelerated English reading list in Bloomfield, N.Y. (2000). From Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom: an. 1975, p. 6; July, 1981, p. 103; Jan. 1982, p. 17; Jan, 1984, p. 25-26; July 1984, p. 122; Sept. 1988, p. 152; July 1992, p. 126; Mar. 2000, p. 64. 1984, George OrwellChallenged in the Jackson County, FL (1981) because Orwell's novel is "pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Lolita, Vladmir NabokovBanned as obscene in France (1956-1959), in England (1955-59), in Argentina (1959), and in New Zealand (1960). The South African Directorate of Publications announced on November 27, 1982, that Lolita has been taken off the banned list, eight years after a request for permission to market the novel in paperback has been refused. Of Mice and Men, John SteinbeckBanned in Ireland (1953); Syracuse, Ind. (1974); Oil City, Pa. (I 977); Grand Blanc, Mich. (1979); Continental, Ohio (1980) and other communities. Challenged in Greenville, S.C. (1977) by the Fourth Province of the Knights of the Ku Klux KIan;VernonVerona Sherill, N.Y School District (1980); St. David, Ariz. (1981) and Tell City, Ind. (1982) due to "profanity and using God's name in vain:" Banned from classroom use at the Scottsboro, Ala. Skyline High School (1983) due to "profanity." The Knoxville, Tenn. School Board chairman vowed to have "filthy books" removed from Knoxville's public schools (1984) and picked Steinbeck's novel as the first target due to "its vulgar language:" Reinstated at the Christian County, Ky. school libraries and English classes (1987) after being challenged as vulgar and offensive. Challenged in the Marion County, WVa. schools (1988), at the Wheaton Warrenville, III. Middle School (1988), and at the Berrien Springs, Mich. High School (1988) because the book contains profanity. Removed from the Northside High School in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (1989) because the book "has profane use of God's name." Challenged as a summer youth program reading assignment in Chattanooga, Tenn. (1989) because "Steinbeck is known to have had an anti business attitude:" In addition, "he was very questionable as to his patriotism:' Removed from all reading lists and collected at the White Chapel High School in Pine Bluff, Ark (1989) because of objections to language. Challenged as appropriate for high school reading lists in the Shelby County, Tenn. school system (1989) because the novel contained "offensive language." Challenged, but retained in a Salinas, Kans. (1990) tenth grade English class despite concerns that it contained "profanity" and "takes the Lord's name in vain." Challenged by a Fresno, Calif (1991) parent as a tenth grade English college preparatory curriculum assignment, citing "profanity" and "racial slurs." The book was retained, and the child of the objecting parent was provided with an alternative reading assignment. Challenged in the Riveria, Tex. schools (1990) because it contains profanity. Challenged as curriculum material at the Ringgold High School in Carroll Township, Pa. (1991) because the novel contains terminology offensive to blacks. Removed and later returned to the Suwannee, Fla. High School library (1991) because the book is "indecent" Challenged at the Jacksboro, Tenn. High School (1991) because the novel contains "blasphemous" language, excessive cursing, and sexual overtones. Challenged as required reading in the Buckingham County, Va. schools (1991) because of profanity. In 1992 a coalition of community members and clergy in Mobile, Ala., requested that local school officials form a special textbook screening committee to "weed out objectionable things:" Steinbeck's novel was the first target because it contained "profanity" and "morbid and depressing themes: 'Temporarily removed from the Hamilton, Ohio High School reading list (1992) after a parent complained about its vulgarity and racial slurs. Challenged in the Waterloo, Iowa schools (1992) and the Duval County, Fla. public school libraries (1992) because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled. Challenged at the Modesto, Calif. High School as recommended reading (1992) because of "offensive and racist language." The word "nigger" appears in the book. Challenged at the Oak Hill High School in Alexandria, La. (1992) because of profanity. Challenged as an appropriate English curriculum assignment at the Mingus, Ariz.Union High School (1993) because of "profane language, moral statement, treatment of the retarded, and the violent ending." Pulled from a classroom by Putnam County, Tenn. school superintendent (1994) "due to the language:' Later, after discussions with the school district counsel, it was reinstated. The book was challenged in the Loganville, Ga. High School (1994) because of its "vulgar language throughout" Challenged in the Galena, Kans. school library (1995) because of the book's language and social implications. Retained in the Bemidji, Minn. schools (1995) after challenges to the book's "objectionable" language. Challenged at the Stephens County High School library in Toccoa, Ga. (I 995) because of "curse words: 'The book was retained. Challenged, but retained in a Warm Springs, VA. High School (1995) English class. Banned from the Washington Junior High School curriculum in Peru, III. (1997) because it was deemed "age inappropriate:" Challenged, but retained, in the Louisville, Ohio high school English classes (1997) because of profanity. Removed, restored, restricted, and eventually retained at the Bay County schools in Panama City, Fla. (1997). A citizen group, the 100 Black United, Inc., requested the novel's removal and "any other inadmissible literary books that have racial slurs in them, such as the using of the word 'Nigger: " Challenged as a reading list assignment for a ninth grade literature class, but retained at the Sauk Rapids Rice High School in St. Cloud, Minn. (1997). A parent complained that the book's use of racist language led to racist behavior and racial harassment. Challenged in O'Hara Park Middle School classrooms in Oakley, Calif. (1998) because it contains racial epithets. Challenged, but retained, in the Bryant, Ark. school library (1998) because of a parent's complaint that the book "takes God's name in vain 15 times and uses Jesus's name lightly." Challenged at the Barron, Wis. School District (1998). Challenged, but retained in the sophomore curriculum at West Middlesex, Pa. High School (1999) despite objections to the novel's profanity. Challenged in the Tomah, Wis. School District (1999) because the novel is violent and contains obscenities. Challenged as required reading at the high school in Grandville, Mich. (2002) because the book "is full of racism, profanity, and foul language." Banned from the George County, Miss. schools (2002) because of profanity. Challenged in the Normal, Ill. Community High Schools (2003) because the books contains "racial slurs, profanity, violence, and does not represent traditional values." An alternative book, Steinbeck's The Pearl, was offered but rejected by the family challenging the novel. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, by Robert P. Doyle. Catch-22, Joseph HellerBanned in Strongsville, Ohio (1972), but the school board's action was overturned in 1976 by a U.S. District Court in Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District. Challenged at the Dallas, Tex. Independent School District high school libraries (1974); in Snoqualmie, Wash. (1979) because of its several references to "whores." 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, Robert P. Doyle. Brave New World, Aldous HuxleyBanned in Ireland (1932). Removed from classroom in Miller, MO (1980), because it made promiscuous sex "look like fun" and challenged frequently throughout the U.S. Challenged as required reading at the Yukon, Oklahoma High School (1988) because of "the book's language and moral content." Challenged as required reading in the Corona-Norco, California Unified School District (1993) because it is "centered around negative activity." Specifically, parents objected that the characters' sexual behavior directly opposed the health curriculum, which taught sexual abstinence until marriage. The book was retained, and teachers selected alternatives if students object to Huxley's novel. Brave New World was again challenged in Foley, Alabama (2000) because of the depictions of "orgies, self-flogging, suicide" and characters who show "contempt for religion, marriage, and the family." The book was removed from the library, pending review. Source: 2001 Banned Books Resource Guide. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest HemingwayBanned in Boston, MA (1930), Ireland (1953), Riverside, CA (1960). Burned in Nazi bonfires (1933). As I Lay Dying, William FaulknerBanned in the Graves County School District in Mayfield, KY (1986) because it contained "offensive and obscene passages referring to abortion and used God's name in vain." The decision was reversed a week later after intense pressure from the ACLU and considerable negative publicity. Challenged as a required reading assignment in an advanced English class of Pulaski County High School in Somerset, KY (1987) because the book contains "profanity and a segment about masturbation." Challenged, but retained, in the Carroll County, MD schools (1991). Two school board members were concerned about the book's coarse language and dialect. Banned at Central High School in Louisville, KY (1994) temporarily because the book uses profanity and questions the existence of God. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest HemingwayThe June 1929 issue of Scribner's Magazine, which ran Hemingway's novel, was banned in Boston, Mass. (1929). Banned in Italy (1929) because of its painfully accurate account of the Italian retreat from Caporetto, Italy; banned in Ireland (1939); challenges at the Dallas, TX. Independent School District high school libraries (1974); challenges at the Vernon-Verona-Sherill, N.Y. School District (1980) as a "sex novel; burned by the Nazis in Germany (1933). Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Heart of Darkness, Joseph ConradTheir Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston Challenged for sexual explicitness, but retained on the Stonewall Jackson High School's academically advanced reading list in Brentsville, VA (1997). A parent objected to the novel's language and sexual explicitness. Invisible Man, Ralph EllisonExcerpts banned in Butler, PA (1975); removed from the high school English reading list in St. Francis, WI (1975). Retained in the Yakima, WA schools (1994) after a five-month dispute over what advanced high school students should read in the classroom. Two parents raised concerns about profanity and images of violence and sexuality in the book and requested that it be removed from the reading list. Song of Solomon, Toni MorrisonChallenged, but retained, in the Columbus, Ohio schools (1993). The complainant believed that the book contains language degrading to blacks, and is sexually explicit. Removed from required reading lists and library shelves in the Richmond County, GA. School District (1994) after a parent complained that passages from the book were "filthy and inappropriate." Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, Fla. (1995). Removed from the St. Mary's County, Md. schools' approved text list (1998) by the superintendent overruling a faculty committee recommendation. Complainants referred to the novel as "filth," "trash," and "repulsive." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Gone with the Wind, Margaret MitchellBanned from Anaheim, Calif. Union High School District English classrooms (9178) according to the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association. Challenged in Waukegan, Ill. School District (1984) because the novel uses the word "nigger." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Native Son, Richard WrightChallenged in Goffstown, N.H. (1978); Elmwood Park, N.J. (1978) due to "objectionable" language; and North Adams, Mass. (1981) due to the book's "violence, sex, and profanity." Challenged at the Berrian Springs, Mich. High School in classrooms and libraries (1988) because the novel is "vulgar, profane, and sexually explicit." Retained in the Yakima, Wash. schools (1994) after a five-month dispute over what advanced high school students should read in the classroom. Two parents raised concerns about profanity and images of violence and sexuality in the book and requested that it be removed from the reading list. Challenged as part of the reading list for Advanced Placement English classes at Northwest High School in High Point, N.C. (1996). The book was challenged because it is "sexually graphic and violent." Removed from Irvington High School in Fremont, Calif. (1998) after a few parents complained the book was unnecessarily violence and sexually explicit. Challenged in the Hamilton High School curriculum in Fort Wayne, Ind. (1998) because of the novel's graphic language and sexual content. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken KeseyChallenged in the Greenley, Colorado public school district (1971) as a non-required American Culture reading. In 1974, five residents of Strongsville, Ohio, sued the board of education to remove the novel. Labeling it "pornographic," they charged the novel "glofiries criminal activity, has a tendency to corrupt juveniles and contains descriptions of bestiality, bizarre violence, and torture, dismemberment, death, and human elimination." Removed from public school libraries in Randolph, NY, and Alton, OK (1975). Removed from the required reading list in Westport, MA (1977). Banned from the St. Anthony, Idaho Freemont High School classrooms (1978) and the instructor fired¾Fogarty v. Atchley. Challenged at the Merrimack, N.H. High School (1982). Challenged as part of the curriculum in an Aberdeen, Washington High School honors English class (1986) because the book promotes "secular humanism." The school board voted to retain the title. Challenged at the Placentia-Yorba Linda, California Unified School District (2000) after complaints by parents stated that teachers "can choose the best books, but they keep choosing this garbage over and over again." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, by Robert P. Doyle. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt VonnegutChallenged in many communities, but burned in Drake, N. Dak (1973). Banned in Rochester, Mich. because the novel "contains and makes references to religious matters" and thus fell within the ban of the establishment clause. An appellate court upheld its usage in the school in Todd v Rochester Community Schools, 41 Mich. App. 320, 200 N. W 2d 90 (I 972). Banned in Levittown, N.Y (1975), North Jackson, Ohio (1979), and Lakeland, Fla. (1982) because of the "book's explicit sexual scenes, violence, and obscene language." Barred from purchase at the Washington Park High School in Racine, Wis. (I 984) by the district administrative assistant for instructional services. Challenged at the Owensboro, Ky. High School library (1985) because of "foul language, a section depicting a picture of an act of bestiality, a reference to 'Magic Fingers' attached to the protagonist's bed to help him sleep, and the sentence: 'The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of God Almighty."' Restricted to students who have parental permission at the four Racine, Wis. Unified District high school libraries (1986) because of "language used in the book depictions of torture, ethnic slurs, and negative portrayals of women:' Challenged at the LaRue County, Ky. High School library (1987) because "the book contains foul language and promotes deviant sexual behavior' Banned from the Fitzgerald, Ga. schools (I 987) because A was filled with profanity and full of explicit sexual references:' Challenged in the Baton Rouge, La. public high school libraries ( 1988) because the book is "vulgar and offensive:' Challenged in the Monroe, Mich. public schools (I 989) as required reading in a modem novel course for high school juniors and senior because of the book's language and the way women are portrayed. Retained on the Round Rock, Tex. Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent. Challenged as an eleventh grade summer reading option in Prince William County, Va ( 1998) because the book "was rife with profanity and explicit sex:" Source: 5, pp. I 37 42; 8, Jan. 1974, p. 4; May 1980, p. 5 I ; Sept. 1982, p. 155; Nov. 1982, p. 197; Sept. 1984, p. 158; Jan. 1986, pp. 9 10; Mar. 1986, p. 57; Mar. 1987, p. 5 I ; July 1987, p. 147; Sept. 1987, pp. 174 75; Nov. 1987, p. 224; May 1988, p. 86; July 1988, pp. I 39 40; July 1989, p. 144, May 1996, p. 99; 9, pp. 78 79; Nov. 1998, p. 183. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest HemingwayScribner. Declared non-mailable by the U.S. Post Office (1940). On Feb. 21, 1973, eleven Turkish book publishers went on trial before an Istanbul martial law tribunal on charges of publishing, possessing, and selling books in violation of an order of the Istanbul martial law command. They faced possible sentences of between one month's and six month's imprisonment "for spreading propaganda unfavorable to the state" and the confiscation of their books. Eight booksellers also were on trial with the publishers on the same charge involving For Whom the Bell Tolls. Source: Haight, Anne Lyon, and Chandler B. Grannis. Banned Books, 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D., 4th ed. New York, N.Y.: Bowker Co., 1978 (p. 80); Index on Censorship. London: Writers and Scholars International, Ltd., published bimonthly, Summer 1973, xii. The Call of the Wild, Jack LondonBanned in Italy (1929), Yugoslavia (1929), and burned in Nazi bonfires (1933). Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Go Tell it on the Mountain, James BaldwinChallenged as required reading in the Hudson Falls, N.Y. schools (1994) because the book has recurring themes of rape, masturbation, violence, and degrading treatment of women. Challenged as a ninth-grade summer reading option in Prince William County, Va. (1988) because the book was "rife with profanity and explicit sex." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. All the King's Men, Robert Penn WarrenChallenged at the Dallas, Tex. Independent School District high school libraries. Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Jan. 1975, p. 6-7. The Lord of the Rings, JRR TolkienBurned in Alamagordo, N. Mex. (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic. Source: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Mar. 2002, p. 61. The Jungle, Upton SinclairBanned from public libraries in Yugoslavia (1929). Burned in the Nazi bonfires because of Sinclair's socialist views (1933). Banned in East Germany (1956) as inimical to communism. Banned in South Korea (1985). Sources: Banned Books, 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D., 4th edition; Anne Lyon Haight and Chandler B. Grannis. Index on Censorship. Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH LawrenceA Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess In 1973 a book seller in Orem, Utah, was arrested to selling the novel. Charges were later dropped, but the book seller as forced to close the store and relocate to another city. Removed from Aurora, Colo. high school (1976) due to "objectionable" language and from high school classrooms in Westport, Mass. (1977) because of "objectionable" language. Removed from two Anniston, Ala. High school libraries (1982), but later reinstated on a restricted basis. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, ed. Robert P. Doyle. In Cold Blood, Truman CapoteBanned, but later reinstated after community protests at the Windsor Forest High School in Savannah, Ga. (2000). The controversy began in early 1999 when a parent complaines about sex, violence, and profanity in the book that was aprt of an Advanced Placement English Class. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Satanic Verses, Salman RushdieBanned in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Quatar, Indonesia, South Africa, and India because of its criticism of Islam. Burned in West Yorkshire, England (1989) and temporarily withdrawn from two bookstores on the advice of police who took threats to staff and property seriously. In Pakistan five people died in riots against the book. Another man died a day later in Kashmir. Ayatollah Khomeni issued a fatwa or religions edict, stating, "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses, which is against Islam, the prophet, and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, have been sentenced to death." Challenged at the Wichita, Ks. Public Library (1989) because the book is "blasphemous to the prophet Mohammed." In Venezuela, owning or reading it was declared a crime under penalty of 15 months' imprisonment. In Japan, the sale of the English-language edition was banned under the threat of fines. The governments of Bulgaria and Poland also restricted its distribution. In 1991, in separare inceidents, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death and its Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was seriously wounded. In 1993 William Nygaard, its Norwegian publisher, was shot and seriously wounded. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Sons and Lovers, DH LawrenceIn 1961 an Oklahoma City group called Mothers United for Decency hired a trailer, dubbed it "smutmobile," and displayed books deemed objectionable, including Lawrence's novel. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Cat's Cradle, Kurt VonnegutThe Strongsville, Ohio School Board (1972) voted to withdraw this title from the school library; this action was overturned in 1976 by a U.S. District Court in Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District, 541 F. 2d 577 (6th Cir. 1976). Challenged at Merrimack, NH High School (1982). A Separate Peace, John KnowlesChallenged in Vernon-Verona-Sherill, NY School District (1980) as a "filthy, trashy sex novel." Challenged at the Fannett-Metal High School in Shippensburg, Pa. (1985) because of its allegedly offensive language. Challenged as appropriate for high school reading lists in the Shelby County, Tenn. school system (1989) because the novel contained "offensive language." Challenged at the McDowell County, N.C. schools (1996) because of "graphic language." Source: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 1980, p. 62; Nov. 1985, p. 204; Jan, 1990, pp 11-12; Jan. 1997, p. 11. Naked Lunch, William S. BurroughsFound obscene in Boston, Mass. Superior Court (1965). The finding was reversed bu the State Supreme Court the following year. Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Women in Love, DH LawrenceSeized by John Summers of the New York Society for the Suppression of vice and declared obscene (1922). Source: 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature. Nicholas Karalides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova. pp. 331-32; "Banned in Boston," Randy F. Nelson, in Almanac of American Letters, p. 142; A History of Books Publishing in the United States, John Tebbel, Vol III, p. 415. The Naked and the Dead, Norman MailerBanned in Canada (1949) and Australia (1949). Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Tropic of Cancer, Henry MillerBanned from U.S. Customs (1934). The U.S. Supreme Court found the novel not obscene (1964). Banned in Turkey (1986). Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. An American Tragedy, Theodore DreiserBanned in Boston, Mass. (1927) and burned by the Nazis in Germany (1933) because it "deals with low love affairs." Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle. Rabbit, Run, John UpdikeFawcett. Banned in Ireland in 1962 because the Irish Board of Censors found the work "obscene" and "indecent," objecting particularly to the author's handling of the characters' sexuality, the "explicit sex acts" and "promiscuity." The work was officially banned from sales in Ireland until the introduction of the revised Censorship Publications Bill in 1967. Restricted to high school students with parental permission in the six Aroostock County, Maine community high school libraries (1976) because of passages in the book dealing with sex and an extramarital affair. Removed from the required reading list for English class at the Medicine Bow, Wyo. Junior High School (1986) because of sexual references and profanity in the book. Source: 5, p. 319-20; 8, Mar. 1977, p. 36; Mar. 1987, p.55. Source: www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/reasonsbanned.cfm************** ABFFE Book of the Month: Obscene in the Extreme: the Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath by Rick Wartzman The ABFFE Book of the Month for September is Obscene in the Extreme: the Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath by Rick Wartzman (Public Affairs), 978-1586483319. Wartzman describes the uproar that occurred in Kern County, California, when The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. Much of the novel was set in Kern County, and local officials attempted to ban the book for misrepresenting their community and for language and situations they considered indecent. The censors were opposed by the local librarian and ACLU.
Rick Wartzman is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the co-author of The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire.Interview with Rick WartzmanABFFE: Why did you decide to write this book?Rick Wartzman: I had stumbled upon a photograph of the burning of The Grapes of Wrath while researching my last book, The King of California, and the image had stayed with me. After all, it’s quite something to see one of the greatest works of literature of the 20th century being tossed into a fire. Then one day, while I was chatting with a friend from Bakersfield, that photo came up in the course of the conversation. My friend asked if I also knew about the librarian who had fought the censorship. I said I didn’t. “She was very brave,” my friend told me. I was intrigued, and so I started to dig. And as I dug, I realized that this was not only a compelling narrative, but there was a much bigger story to tell: The burning and banning of The Grapes of Wrath was a wonderful window into the class politics of 1930s America. ABFFE: Why did the Kern County Board of Supervisors ban it?Rick Wartzman: The Kern County Board of Supervisors banned The Grapes of Wrath in August 1939 from schools and libraries for several reasons. First, it attacked the book for its “profanity, lewd, foul and obscene language.” The title of my book, in fact, comes from a statement by one of the giant farm operators in the area—an ally of the Board of Supervisors, who helped lead a public burning of The Grapes of Wrath. He described Steinbeck’s novel as “obscene in the extreme sense of the word.” But the board also didn’t like the way that Steinbeck had rendered the community. As Steinbeck saw it, the big growers around the town of Bakersfield—where the Joads had settled in the book—were brutally exploiting their migrant laborers, often with the aid of local law enforcement. Those running the county maintained that this portrait was unfair and untrue. ABFFE: What surprised you most during your research?Rick Wartzman: It wasn’t until I began reading a lot about the politics of the 1930s, especially in California, that I appreciated just how radical Steinbeck’s novel was in the context of the times. He writes passionately and persuasively in The Grapes of Wrath about the prospect of insurrection in America: “When a majority of the people are hungry and cold, they will take by force what they need.” That may sound crazy now, but if you were part of the power structure in California in 1939, the possibility of armed revolt probably didn’t seem all that farfetched. California had just elected its first Democratic governor of the 20th century, Culbert Olson—a political protégé of longtime socialist Upton Sinclair. Olson, in turn, had appointed as a state official none other than Carey McWilliams, whose book Factories in the Field (often described as the nonfiction counterpart to The Grapes of Wrath) called for the Soviet-style collectivization of private agriculture. Communist laborer organizers, emboldened by McWilliams’ appointment and Steinbeck’s book, were busy trying to organize the farm hands of the San Joaquin Valley. As Steinbeck himself said, it felt like there was “a revolution . . . going on.” ABFFE: Who are your favorite characters in Obscene in the Extreme?Rick Wartzman: I came to greatly admire [librarian] Gretchen Knief for her bravery, and I have a real fondness for Clell Pruett—even though he’s the one who, under his boss’s direction, burned The Grapes of Wrath. But my favorite character is Raymond Henderson—the blind ACLU lawyer who battled the book ban. He was an incredibly smart, courageous soul who spent his whole life fighting for the little guy. His letters (which I found at the National Federation of the Blind, where he later served as executive director) are beautifully written and a lot of fun to read. He had a terrific sense of humor and would sometimes conclude his missives with a line that really captures the spirit of those hungry years: “May the pork chops never be wanting.” I love that. Source: www.abffe.com/wartzman.html*********** The Grapes of Wrath John SteinbeckTHE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMESHe didn't know it at the time, but John Steinbeck started getting ready to write The Grapes of Wrath when he was a small boy in California. Much of what he saw and heard while growing up found its way into the novel. On weekends his father took John and his three sisters on long drives out into the broad and beautiful valleys south of Salinas, the town where John was born in 1902. John passed vast orchards, and endless fields green with lettuce and barley. He observed the workers and the run-down shacks in which they lived. And he saw, even before he was old enough to wear long pants, that the farmhands' lives differed from his own. Although the Steinbecks weren't wealthy (John's father ran a flour mill), they lived in a comfortable Victorian house. John grew up on three square meals a day. He never doubted that he would always have enough of life's necessities. He even got a pony for his 12th birthday. (The pony became the subject of one of Steinbeck's earliest successes, his novel The Red Pony.) But don't think John was pampered; his family expected him to work. He delivered newspapers and did odd jobs around town. Family came first in the Steinbeck household. While not everyone saw eye-to-eye all the time, parents and children got along well. His father saw that John had talent and encouraged him to become a writer. His mother at first wanted John to be a banker- a real irony when you consider what Steinbeck says about banks in The Grapes of Wrath- but she changed her mind when John began spending hours in his room scrawling stories and writing articles for the school paper. Later in life, Steinbeck denied that his family served as a model for the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath. But both families understood well the meaning of family unity. As a boy, John roamed the woods and meadows near his home and explored the caves. He swam in the creeks and water holes and became acquainted with the ways of nature. He developed a feel for the land. Each year the Salinas River flooded and then dried up, and John began to understand the cycles of seasons. He saw that weather was more than just something that might cancel a picnic. He saw that sunshine and clouds and rain and temperature readings were vital to farmers and growers. You can tell that John must have loved the out-of-doors. Otherwise, how could he have set four novels and several stories in the lush countryside where he spent his youth? During high school (1915-19) he worked as a hand on nearby ranches. There he saw migrant workers, men without futures, breaking their backs all day for paltry wages and at night throwing away their cash in card games and barrooms. Out of this experience came the novel Of Mice and Men. Yet he also developed a profound respect for the inner strength of many of these laborers. They owned little, moved fast, kept few friends, and led barren lives. But they endured. In spite of adversity, they stood tall and proud. They had self-respect. Their spirits could not be broken. In fact, Steinbeck developed so much admiration for these working "stiffs," as they called each other, that he took up their style of life. He was nineteen and had spent two unrewarding years at Stanford University. He tried to find work as a deckhand on a Pacific freighter, but ended up instead in the beet and barley fields of the Willoughby Ranch south of Salinas. Then he worked in a beet factory as a bench-chemist. All the while, he gathered material for writing. After each day's work he wrote- mostly stories and poems. Six months later he decided to return to the classroom and to study the writer's craft seriously. Some of his pieces ended up in the college newspaper; others showed up later as sections of The Long Valley, In Dubious Battle, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden. Steinbeck's success as a writer coincided with the coming of the Great Depression. As many people around the country lost their wealth, Steinbeck prospered. He started to travel, not only because he could afford it, but because he wanted to collect material for his writing. The country was heavy with frustration. Everywhere he went he met downtrodden people with stories to be told. In 1937, driving a late-model car, he and his wife Carol traveled Route 66 from Oklahoma to California. He saw the roadside camps, used-car lots, diners, and gas stations that eventually became sites for events in The Grapes of Wrath. Thinking that a good story might be written about the migrants, he spent four weeks with workers in California, working with them in the fields and living in their camps. What started as an idea for a story soon became an issue for Steinbeck. He wrote in a letter to a friend: I must go over to the interior valleys. There are about five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving. The government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them with the fascist groups of utilities and banks and huge growers sabotaging the thing all along the line and yelling for a balanced budget... I've tied into the thing from the first and I must get down there and see it and see if I can't do something to help knock these murderers on the heads.... I'm pretty mad about it. He wrote an angry article on the inhumane treatment of the migrants. He detailed the wretched conditions of the camps and blamed the California ranch owners for misery among the workers. Meanwhile, he had begun working on The Grapes of Wrath. It pointed fingers at those responsible for keeping people in poverty. It used tough language (in the 1930s four-letter words were uncommon in novels). It was meant to rouse its readers. Steinbeck chose its title from the words of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," a song, both religious and patriotic, that stirs the emotions as few songs do. Steinbeck expected the book to be a failure. He thought, mistakenly, that many people would hate the book and would most likely hate him, too. He might be branded Communist, a label that could give him trouble for the rest of his life. His publisher urged him to soften the book, to make it more acceptable. Steinbeck refused: "I've never changed a word to fit the prejudices of a group and I never will," he wrote. It was evidently a wise decision. The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's greatest novel. It won the Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into such languages as French, German, and Japanese. Steinbeck's frank portrayal of real people excited readers everywhere. Although some libraries and school boards banned the book, it became a bestseller almost instantly and was made into an Academy Award-winning movie in 1940. The book was rarely attacked on artistic grounds, but some people called it a distortion of the truth, a piece of Communist propaganda. They said it couldn't be true that almost every migrant was a hero and almost every Californian a villain. Almost no one denied that it was a well-written, soundly structured piece of literature. John Steinbeck died in 1968. © Copyright 1984 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc. Continued.....
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 30, 2008 11:16:08 GMT 4
...continued from previous post: Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! September 27 through October 4, 2008 Second Posting 2 of 2
The Grapes of Wrath [...continued]
Note From Michelle: I recommend anything written by John Steinbeck! My son and I will be reading The Grapes of Wrath, aloud together, this year as we study the Great Depression. The Grapes of Wrath has been continuously challenged, banned, and burned! When access to this book is denied to children and adults, they loose the opportunity to reflect on and discuss the following:
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
THE NOVEL
THE PLOT This is the story of the Joads, a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers. Unless you've spent a good deal of time in the rural South and Southwest, you've probably never met anyone like them. They are tough people, but not insensitive. They have strong feelings, and when you see all they have to endure, you end up admiring them.
At the beginning of the novel, the Joads have been thrown off their farm by the bank that owns the land. A long drought has made farming unprofitable, and so the Joads, who have occupied the land for more than a generation, cannot stay. According to handbills they've seen, good jobs are plentiful in California. When we first meet the Joads, they are about to join thousands of other poor families on an 1800-mile trek West.
Just before they leave, the second oldest son, Tom, rejoins the family after having spent four years in prison. He brings with him a former preacher, Jim Casy, who has recently given up his worship of a divine God and now believes that the holy spirit can be found in people's love for one another. Casy's idea becomes a major theme in the novel.
The Joads buy a used truck and pile it high with their belongings. At the last minute, however, Grampa Joad refuses to go. He cannot tear himself away from the land of his roots. Knowing that they must stick together, the family numbs the old man with medicine and loads him onto the truck. But not long after, Grampa dies and is buried alongside Route 66, the main road west. while crossing the desert on the last leg of the journey to California, Granma dies too.
Between the chapters that tell the story of the Joad family, we find so-called intercalary, or interchapters. Usually odd-numbered, these interchapters tell the story of the Dust Bowl and the migrant workers' life on the road. Taken all together, the interchapters show us the social and historical background of events in the story. They also are Steinbeck's way of expressing his opinions about some of America's social ills in the 1930s. His viewpoint is crystal clear: Steinbeck sympathizes with the migrants and condemns the banks, the police, the landowners, and anyone else who contributes to the migrants' plight. But he also believes that, in spite of maltreatment, the poor and dispossessed workers have a nobility and inner strength that will assure their survival. He advocates the need for workers to band together: in their unity they will find the power to claim their rightful place in American society.
Once in California, the Joads discover the truth of the rumors they heard en route: as migrants they are not welcome; there are too few jobs. When they can find work, the pay is so low that they can barely afford food. They are forced to settle in squalid camps called Hoovervilles. In one camp Tom Joad gets into a fight with an abusive deputy. When the sheriff comes to arrest Tom, Casy offers to go to jail in his place. After a time they find a government-run camp where life is fairly decent, but they can't find jobs nearby. So they move to a peach-growing area where pickers are needed. As they drive into the Hooper Ranch to claim jobs, they notice an angry crowd at the gate. That night Tom discovers that the crowd is a group of workers on strike and that Casy is the strike leader. Casy convinces Tom that all the working people must stick together.
A band of thugs hired by the ranch owners kills Casy. In the melee, Tom strikes and kills one of Casy's murderers. But Tom's face is gashed. To keep Tom from being caught, the family conceals him between mattresses on their truck, and flees the Hooper Ranch. Next, the Joads settle in a camp made up of abandoned railroad boxcars. Tom's little sister Ruthie brags in public about her fugitive brother, forcing Tom to hide in a cave. Finally, he decides to go off on his own and carry on Casy's work.
The Joads find work picking cotton, but huge rains cause floods. The family has no food and little hope. The oldest daughter, Rose of Sharon, gives birth to a stillborn child. As the book ends, Rose of Sharon, realizing that people need each other to survive, breast-feeds a dying stranger.
[The Grapes of Wrath Contents]
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THE CHARACTERS
THE JOAD FAMILY
Although each person in the Joad family is a separate individual, the family often acts as though it were one person. It makes decisions as a group, travels as a single unit, and reacts uniformly to events. Yet the family's personality is derived from the distinct qualities of each member. Uncle John is sad and lonely; Granma is religious; Al loves a good time. And Ma, the sturdy one, is the centerpiece of the Joads, around whom the whole family gathers. If you examine all the Joads- Grampa, Pa, Tom, Noah, Rose of Sharon, Ruthie, and Winfield- each can be tagged with a different label. Even Connie, who is a Joad only by marriage, contributes to the complex personality of the family.
As you might expect, experience changes the family's personality. Who wouldn't change after being evicted from home, traveling half-way across the continent, and scrounging for bread? Before the Joads leave home, Granma and Grampa rule the roost, at least in name. When the family breaks its ties to the land and joins the migrant exodus, the old generation gives way to the new. Pa becomes the leader, but his authority is fleeting. Ma gradually takes over. Her powerful personality and steady hand hold the family together for a time, in spite of forces that threaten to tear it apart. When, for example, Tom plans to remain with the Wilsons' disabled car until it's fixed, Ma vows to smash him with a jack handle if he insists that the family go on without him. The rest of the family is amazed at Ma's forcefulness, but from then on she is the leader of the Joads.
She oversees an increasingly fragmented group of people. Grampa and Granma die; Noah and Connie go their own ways; Al takes up with his fiancee's family; and Tom finally leaves in order to carry Casy's message to the workers.
It's literally true that Ma fails to hold the family together. Does that mean that she is a failure? You could take that position, but you also have to take into account that Ma eventually adopts a much larger family- the family of Man- to replace the one she's lost.
Presumably the Joads' experience parallels that of countless migrant families. Should we assume, therefore, that Steinbeck intends to show us how a whole class of good and honest migrant farmers wilted under social and economic pressure? That may be so if you think that the Joads' breakup represents their failure as a family. On the other hand, since many of the Joads remain undefeated in the end, Steinbeck may want us to admire the migrants' ability to endure, even against insurmountable odds.
At the end of the book the Joads have lost their family identity. But they've replaced it with something equally worthy: they've found kinship with other migrant families. The Joads merge with the Wainwrights, and earlier in the book, with the Wilsons, because each family needed the other. When "I," as Steinbeck writes, becomes "we," the fragmented family becomes whole again. The members don't share last names, but they give sustenance and support to each other in the form of food, blankets, a kind word, medicine, advice, even love. At the book's end, Rose of Sharon shares the milk from her breast with a dying man she has never seen before. That the man is a human being in need is reason enough to treat him like family.
When isolated families fuse with one another, a larger family, a family of Man, develops. Numerous characters and events in The Grapes of Wrath help transform the Joads into members of a universal family. Think of what Casy says about the soul- that nobody has an individual soul, but everybody's just got a piece of a great big soul. By opening their tent to the Joads, the Wilsons are saying, "Welcome, brother!" At the Weedpatch Camp, the Wallaces, father and son, invite Tom Joad to work alongside them, even though they'll earn less money as a result. Casy lives and dies for others, and at the end Tom will walk in Casy's footsteps. Finally, when Rose of Sharon offers her milk to a stranger, she wears an enigmatic smile, suggesting that she, too, has discovered the joy that comes from adopting all men as brothers.
TOM JOAD
Imagine what The Grapes of Wrath would be like if Steinbeck had made Tom Joad a tractor repairman or dry-goods merchant instead of an ex-convict. If Tom were meek and mild, someone like Rose of Sharon's husband Connie, for instance, what would be lost? Think of what Tom can do that Connie wouldn't dare. We know that Tom, who killed a man in a drunken brawl, can burst into violence at any moment, especially when provoked. Tom almost instinctively knocks the abusive deputy sheriff off his feet during a scuffle at the Hooverville camp, for example. Later, in a rage, he clubs to death the man who kills Casy. As one of the principal characters in the story, Tom has to be someone sturdy enough not just to take care of himself but to support and defend others.
There's no doubt that Tom has a quick temper. He speaks harshly to the truck driver who gives him a lift; he scolds the one-eyed man for feeling self-pity; he tells off the fat man who runs the filling station. Perhaps Tom's belligerence can be explained by his four years in prison, although he claims to have no regrets about them. However, there may be another explanation. If you ignore what he says and ask why he berates these people, you find that Tom doesn't despise each man, but only what each stands for. Each feels defeated by life's hardships. Tom gives them all a brutally frank pep talk, as though he wants to get them moving again. Tom can't just throw up his hands and walk away from problems. And he doesn't want to see others do that either.
Tom is on parole. If he gets in trouble or is caught leaving Oklahoma, he could be sent right back to McAlester. You might expect that a man in constant danger of being imprisoned would be less aggressive, but sitting back is not in Tom's nature. If it were, we'd never have seen him going off at the end of the book to devote his life to help organize strikes.
Just as Tom accepted his prison sentence, he accepts the harsh blows that Nature and the banks have dealt to his family. What he cannot tolerate, however, is unfair or abusive treatment. He hates being forced to hide from the deputies on his very own land, for example. Several times in the novel Tom and others get pushed around by the authorities. What makes Tom strike out at abuses? Is it his strong sense of fairness? Or is Tom merely a victim of a short temper? Perhaps both impulses rule Tom to some extent.
Although Tom is not easy to like, you'd probably want him on your side in a tough situation. He is loyal, straightforward, and realistic, especially at the start of the novel. In contrast to Casy, who is a visionary, Tom has both feet planted on the dusty ground. He is concerned only about the here and now- where the next meal will come from, where to stay that night, how to keep the car running. He has no time for sentimentality. When his brother Al wants to tell him about Ma's feelings toward him, Tom replies, "S'pose we talk 'bout some other stuff."
Tom's inability to deal with feelings does not make him a callous person. He has strong affection for Casy, for Ma, and for Pa, too. In fact, he admires everyone who struggles to make an honest living without stepping on others. He can't abide people who throw their weight around, such as the proprietor of the Hooverville camp, the sheriffs and their deputies, and the guards at Hooper Ranch. Without Ma's firm hand on him, Tom would probably have attacked some of these authoritarians, and who can blame him?
As the Joads wander around California, Tom meets more good people who keep up the increasingly difficult struggle to live a decent life. He admires their strength, and he can't stand by idly when they are mistreated. To save Floyd from unjust arrest, Tom knocks down the deputy. To keep peace at the Saturday night dance, Tom stands watch. And to find out why workers at the Hooper Ranch entrance were angry, he ignores the guards' order to mind his own business. In the darkness he slides under the barbed wire fence surrounding the compound, meets Casy, and learns the true story of the strike.
From then on, Tom follows in Casy's footsteps. His concerns extend beyond himself and his family. They now include all downtrodden people. He feels a calling to help in any way he can. Casy's violent death probably hastens Tom's decision to work for the welfare of all poor people. While hiding from the police, Tom has a chance to think. He thinks about the meaning of Casy's words- that a man is no good alone, and that a "fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one...." Tom becomes Casy's heir and disciple. If you think of Casy as a Christ-like figure, a good man with a message of love for the world, then Tom is like St. Paul- a tough, realistic organizer who will try to spread the word and make Casy's idealism a reality. As he says to Ma just before he leaves the family forever, "I'll be aroun' in the dark, I'll be ever'where- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there." Tom may end up dead, like Casy, but is there any doubt he'll go down swinging?
MA JOAD
Ma Joad holds the fate of her family in her big, thick hands. Without her the family ceases to function: Pa doesn't make decisions; Uncle John wallows in self-reproach; Rose of Sharon falls prey to superstition and doubt; Al goes off chasing girls; and the two young children, Ruthie and Winfield, grow up without discipline. Had Ma not stood her ground and threatened him with a jack handle, even Tom would have abandoned his kinfolk sooner than he did.
By the end of the novel we know Ma better than any other Joad, for we see her in more different situations than anyone else. Yet she is not considered the main character- although you probably could make a case for it. We see Ma first when she greets Tom, just back from prison. The family, curious about prison life, views Tom as some sort of hero. But not Ma. She's interested in Tom's frame of mind. "They didn' do nothin' in that jail to rot you out with crazy mad?" she asks. Ma's interest in the inner person sets her apart from the others in the family. She searches for meaning in people and events. When Casy tells the Joads about his religious conversion in the hills, Ma studies him, her eyes "questioning, probing and understanding."
Ma derives meaning in life from her family. She needs to protect them, guide them, help them feel safe. It's clear why Steinbeck calls her the citadel of the family. Most of all, she provides the family with nourishment- physical as well as moral. In scene after scene we see Ma buying groceries, preparing meals, doling out victuals. Even when food is scarce, she manages to scrape meals together, and sometimes she feeds strangers, too. With Ma around, no one ever goes hungry.
She has a harder time providing moral support. She would like everyone in her family to live decently, but life on the road and in the camps won't allow it. The best she can do is set an example and hope that others will be buoyed by her courage and optimism. In some ways she seems almost too good to be true. How sturdy she seems when she burns all her letters on the night before the family takes to the road. To keep the family moving, she cradles Granma's body in her arms all through the night of the desert crossing, after which Casy observes, "...there's a woman so great with love- she scares me. Makes me afraid an' mean." She comforts Rose of Sharon repeatedly and serves as peacekeeper when Al and Connie exchange harsh words. Only to Tom does she express doubts about the future, that maybe California "ain't so nice."
Ma's main ambition is to keep the family intact. Each time a person dies or leaves, Ma suffers a personal defeat. Even though the Joads leave home with 13 people and are left at the end with only six, you never get the feeling that Ma has failed. She's done her best, which in itself is a type of triumph. Also, her determination to go on strengthens with each harsh turn of events. In flight from the burning squatters' camp, she hails the promise of the people: "Us people will go on livin'.... They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people- we go on."
As her immediate family dissolves, Ma adopts a larger group, the people, as her family. Don't Casy's words about Ma's boundless love seem prophetic now? "Use' ta be the family was fust," Ma tells Mrs. Wainwright in the boxcar. "It ain't so now. It's anybody." Realistically, Ma can't include everybody in her concept of family. She must be talking about people in need- the poor, homeless, downtrodden rejects of society.
Ma is not a leader of the people, as Casy tries to be and Tom may one day become. Rather, she embodies the qualities of the people. Since Steinbeck often uses characters as symbols, you might think of Ma as symbolic of the people's strength and endurance. But you can recognize human qualities in Ma as well. She's sentimental, loving, protective, and feisty.
As the novel ends, the flood waters rise and the food runs out. Conditions for the migrants could not be worse. By all rights, they should finally be crushed. But they're not. The migrant families will endure regardless of any hardship they meet, for when defeat is near they can depend on dauntless figures like Ma Joad to carry them through.
JIM CASY
Do you find it surprising that Jim Casy, one of the three most important characters in The Grapes of Wrath- along with Tom and Ma Joad- does not appear in about one-third of the book? He disappears from the time of his arrest until Tom meets him again outside Hooper Ranch. Yet we rarely forget him; the Joad family reminds us of him repeatedly. Both Ma and Tom often recall Casy's ideas and words.
Casy carries weight because of what he says rather than what he does. He talks a lot. As a former preacher, he is used to talking, and although he's given up his trade, he can't keep still. What has changed, however, is what he talks about.
We hear him tell Tom about his recent retreat from organized Christian religion. Hypocrisy and a weakness for women have forced him to reexamine his beliefs. After some hard thinking it came to him that sex was no sin, just something that people do. He also discovered that he didn't need Jesus and God to explain the love he felt for life and people. People, in fact, were what he loved most- much more than Jesus, who was just someone about whom stories were told. As for the individual soul, which each person is supposed to tend all his life, well, that didn't make sense to Casy any more. "Maybe all men got one big soul everbody's a part of," he says to Tom soon after the two men meet.
Casy describes his avid love for people as a force so strong it makes him "fit to bust." Despite his enthusiasm, though, he's in a dilemma. He's got something to give and no one to give it to. Most of the people have abandoned their farms and are moving away. All except Muley Graves, whose solitary rebellion triggers a thought in Casy's mind. Muley innocently mumbles an idea about sharing a jack rabbit with Casy and Tom for dinner. "I ain't got no choice in the matter," he says. If another fellow is hungry, he can't just go away and eat alone. "Muley's got a-holt of somepin," responds Casy, "an' it's too big for him, an' it's too big for me." What Muley had "a-holt" of was a philosophy of life, a credo to live by. That night, instead of sleeping, Casy figures out how he can act on Muley's idea. When you consider Casy's actions in the remainder of the book, you can probably infer what thoughts churned in his mind that night.
Casy can't act on his principles right away. First he must find the means to get to California. Fortunately, Ma Joad, always the generous soul, invites Casy to join her family. En route, he earns his keep. Even though he's no longer a man of God, he says grace, performs funeral rites for Grampa, and helps Tom repair the Wilsons' car.
In Hooverville, Casy at last gets his chance to practice what he has started to preach. Tom trips the deputy sheriff who wants to arrest Floyd, an innocent man. Casy joins the fray and knocks the man out with a kick to the neck. When the sheriff returns to haul Tom to jail, Casy volunteers to go in Tom's place: "Somebody got to take the blame... an' I ain't doin' nothin' but set aroun'." You could argue that someone who espouses love, as Casy does, has no business kicking fallen men, but Casy's action may be justified in this case because the deputy was aiming his rifle at Floyd, fleeing into the willows.
Months later we run into Casy again. Out of jail, he has begun to organize the workers, and in fact, he leads the strike at Hooper Ranch. He has translated his love for people into an effort to show them that their strength lies in collective action. Love can help them only so much. But if the love he feels can be turned into work in their behalf, then his love will serve some useful purpose. He tells the people that together they have power; fragmented, they don't stand a chance against their oppressors.
Because union organizers are less popular than frost among the fruit farmers, Casy has undertaken a perilous occupation. The owners won't stand for unionization and will resort to strong-arm tactics to prevent it. In spite of the risk, Casy devotes his life- and ultimately gives it- to the union movement.
On the night of Tom and Casy's reunion, thugs come to find Casy. As he is about to be clubbed to death, Casy turns to his attackers and says, "You fellas don' know what you're doin'." In effect, Casy sacrifices himself so that others may be better off. His action is Christ-like, and his final words call to mind Christ's last words, too. Perhaps it is more than a coincidence that Casy's initials are J. C.
PA JOAD
If The Grapes of Wrath were a typical American novel about Oklahoma sharecroppers, you might reasonably expect the father to be strong and virile. But the novel isn't typical and Pa Joad doesn't fit the mold.
By tradition, age, and sex, Pa is the head of the Joad family. (Don't count Grampa Joad because he's gone silly in the head.) When the family holds meetings to make decisions, Pa presides. Pa convinces the family to bury Grampa in a roadside grave, and Pa rallies the men at the boxcar camp to help build a floodwall. Nevertheless, Pa often takes a back seat to Ma as head of the family. Steinbeck tells us that Pa "could not know hurt or fear unless she [Ma] acknowledged hurt or fear." A man who depends on another to confirm his own feelings has got to be rather wobbly.
Before the Joads become migrants Pa probably couldn't admit, either to himself or others, that Ma was made of sturdier stuff than he. It would hurt too much. Once on the road, however, the old ways don't count anymore. Ma's revolt- when she vows to clobber with a jack handle anyone who dares to defy her word- puts Pa finally in second place. Never again can he even pretend to be the leader, at least not within the family.
If Ma is solid oak, Pa is soft wood- pliable and easily split. On the night that Noah, the first-born son, came into the world, for example, Pa cracked. Alone in the house with Ma, the poor woman shrieking in agony, Pa panicked. He tried to pull the baby from the womb, twisting and stretching the head in the process. Noah grew up strange, always slightly out of touch with the world. Whenever Pa saw Noah, he felt ashamed.
It made sense for Steinbeck to give Ma Joad a faltering husband. Throughout the novel Ma has enough to contend with; she doesn't need a scrappy mate, too. In fact, Ma's perseverance stands out in contrast to Pa's infirmities. When Pa sags, Ma bolsters him. Pa tells her that going out daily to look for work and coming back empty-handed "puts a weight on ya." Ma deliberately tries to anger him to test his grit. She claims that men who don't do their jobs don't have the right to make decisions. If Pa were a broken man, he wouldn't respond to her taunts. But he comes back at her in a rage, and Ma is so pleased. It shouldn't surprise us. Why shouldn't Pa stay whole with Ma around to hold him together?
UNCLE JOHN
Uncle John divides his life into two parts: there's the part before his wife died and the part after. We don't hear much about the earlier years. But we know that John has been in pain every day since his tragic loss.
In time, most people recover from the loss of loved ones. Why hasn't John? We overhear Tom Joad telling Casy why: "He figures it's his fault his woman died." John feels guilty for refusing to call the doctor when his young bride of four months complained of stomach pains. He gave her a dose of painkiller instead. The next day she died of a burst appendix.
John considers his misdeed a sin, for which he has to suffer every day of his life. Sometimes he can't take the torment and drowns his woes in drink.
He blames the Joad family's misfortunes on himself and his sin. He also calls himself a burden on the family. Maybe, he says, he should have stayed back in Oklahoma. Is John belittling himself to win sympathy? Perhaps, because people who tear themselves down are often asking indirectly for a shoulder to lean on. If all he wants is a word of encouragement, though, he's picked the wrong group. The Joads are pretty tired of John's whining and often tell him to keep still and pull himself together.
If John weren't a Joad, he'd be like one of the roadside characters that the family meets- a man like the fat filling-station attendant and the one-eyed man in the junk yard. He'd need a good talking-to by Tom Joad, who'd tell him to quit wallowing in self-pity and start making something of himself. But since he is a Joad, Pa's older brother, in fact, the family carries him along.
Does John seem out of place in a family that symbolizes endurance and courage? Perhaps, but the Joads accommodate him easily. Then, too, John's weaknesses contrast with the others' strengths. Having a member of the clan who's mired in melancholy- and what family doesn't have one?- helps make the Joads altogether more human.
Near the end of the story, Uncle John surprises us. He volunteers to bury Rose of Sharon's stillborn baby. But instead of finding a burial site, he launches the apple-crate coffin into a roadside stream and shouts, "Go down an' tell 'em. Go down in the street and rot an' tell 'em that way." In his own way John has reenacted the moment in the Old Testament when Moses' mother sends her infant son into the bulrushes to keep him from growing up in bondage. In his version of the incident, John sends a bitter message to the world about the conditions of his people. It's his most daring act in the whole novel.
AL JOAD
During the story, Al Joad, the third son (after Noah and Tom), leaps from youth to adulthood. We meet him first when he's returning from a night of "tom-cattin'," or girl-chasing. That's what he does with his Life- he enjoys himself. In some ways he's a little kid. He admires his big brother Tom, for example, not for Tom's meritorious qualities but for his reputation as a killer. Tom's parole disappoints Al. He would have preferred Tom to break out of prison.
Al represents a new breed of Joads. He plans to leave the land. Someday Al wants to own a garage in town because he knows a lot about cars and engines.
When the family takes to the road, Al's knowledge becomes very important. He's assigned the task of buying a truck and keeping it in good repair. It's a big responsibility, which he takes very seriously.
Because Al has suddenly become a vital member of the family, he is taken into the circle of adult men who make decisions. Underneath, however, Al is still a boy. He lacks the confidence of manhood. Every time the truck breaks down he's afraid that he'll be blamed. He doesn't want to disappoint the family, especially not Tom. After the Wilsons' Dodge breaks a con-rod (short for "connecting rod," a rigid rod that transmits power from the crankshaft to a piston in an internal combustion engine), Ma rescues him from self-doubt. She tells Al, "It ain't your fault." Tom, on the other hand, pushes his kid brother. He won't allow Al to feel sorry for himself. If Al is going to be a man, he'll have to act and feel like one. When Al makes up an excuse for a burned-out bearing even though no one has blamed him, Tom lashes out: "Young fella, all full a piss an' vinegar. Wanta be a hell of a guy all the time. But, goddamn it, Al, don' keep ya guard up when nobody ain't sparrin' with ya. You gonna be all right."
Although he continues to leave broken-hearted girls behind him as the family wanders around California, Al does turn out all right at the end. He's the last Joad to leave the family. When flood waters damage the truck almost beyond repair, he knows his job as family mechanic is done. Guiltlessly, he can set off on his own, shape a life as a garage owner. His love life has settled down, too, for he plans to marry Aggie Wainwright.
ROSE OF SHARON
They say that mothers-to-be are sometimes irritable, often sickly, and always unpredictable. Rose of Sharon, the Joads' older daughter, qualifies in all three respects.
Anyone on a difficult overland journey has every right to become upset and cross. But because she's pregnant, Rose of Sharon complains more than most, particularly after the family reaches California.
She frets mostly over her baby. Will it be healthy if she can't get good food to eat? Will the baby be hurt by a bumpy road? The family dog gets killed on the highway as Rose of Sharon looks on. Will the shock harm the infant?
A religious fanatic at the government camp plants the thought in Rose of Sharon's head that sinful mothers make their babies die. Rose of Sharon thinks she's sinned by dancing and by acting in a play back in Oklahoma. In spite of Ma's assurances, Rose of Sharon can't stop believing that if her baby isn't damned in one way, it is doomed in another.
Do Rose of Sharon's antics make her seem immature, almost too young to be a mother? She is at a tender age, probably not yet 18. When Tom left for prison four years back, she was only a child. Now she's a woman, married to Connie Rivers.
Connie and Rose of Sharon set themselves apart from the mundane matters that occupy the rest of the family. They focus solely on the baby. That they are bringing new life to the world allows them to dwell in the future instead of the here and now. They dream of the house they'll buy for the baby in California, about the car they'll drive, and about Connie's schooling and job.
When the going gets tough, Connie abandons his young wife. What a setback for Rose of Sharon! Her every ache and worry are compounded. She grows sick and lethargic.
At the boxcar camp some of Rose of Sharon's ailments go away. She gets plenty of rest and nourishing food. But feelings of bitterness over being deserted stay put. Secret jealousy and self-pity keep her from taking part in Al and Aggie's engagement celebration.
As time for the birth approaches, Rose of Sharon does a surprising thing for someone in her delicate state. She insists on picking cotton with the rest of her family. Is she being ruled by a self-destructive impulse? Downhearted people often are. Or might her sudden desire to work be just one of those odd urges that pregnant women feel?
Out in the cotton field she is chilled by the cold and wind. She develops a fever and lies in bed for three days. The next day, as the floodwaters rise around the boxcar, she goes into long and painful labor. The baby is born dead.
Rose of Sharon takes the news stoically, which is unlike her. Maybe she's relieved to know that she won't have to raise a child in awesome poverty. Suffering through childbirth has perhaps opened her eyes. Throughout the book we've seen her concerned almost exclusively with herself and her problems. Now she looks out at the world and turns completely about. In an act of extreme charity, she suckles a dying man with the milk of human kindness.
What Ma learned during months of suffering, Rose of Sharon discovered all at once: everybody must be treated as family if we are to endure. It's a message of love, which Rose of Sharon powerfully dramatizes for us in a barn.
CONNIE RIVERS
Connie is Rose of Sharon's 19-year-old husband. He probably would have been a faithful and affectionate father, but he never got the chance.
He was proud of Rose of Sharon's pregnancy and a little frightened, too. The changes taking place in his young wife happened so quickly they startled him. Like Rose of Sharon, he was obsessed by the baby. He lets the baby rule his thoughts and dreams. Whatever Rose of Sharon might want for the baby, he'll work to get it. First he'll get a house, then a car. He'll get an education and shape a cozy life for his little family.
Connie makes all sorts of plans and promises, in fact, all of which grow further from reality the closer he gets to California. Hooverville is a far cry from the little white house of his dreams. "If I'd of knowed it would be like this I wouldn' of came," he laments to Rose of Sharon.
Disappointments defeat him. Just like that, he walks out on Rose of Sharon and the rest of the Joads.
Pa's comment about his son-in-law could serve as Connie's epitaph: "Connie wasn' no good." He probably didn't deserve a place in a family known for its ability to endure hardship.
NOAH JOAD
Noah, the first-born son in the Joad family, is a stranger in the world. The night Noah was born, Pa panicked. Terrified by Ma's shrieking, Pa tried to hurry the birth. He pulled at the baby's head, twisting it out of shape.
Noah grew up out of touch with life. He never says much and his face wears a wondering look, as though life is a puzzle that he can't even begin to solve. Yet he learns to read and write, to work and to play, but he just doesn't seem to care. He goes through the motions of living.
When the family finally reaches California, Noah asserts himself for the first time. He's shocked by reports of starving people and doesn't intend to join their ranks. He's going to stay by the river and catch fish. As he tells Tom, "Fella can't starve beside a nice river." So he walks down the river and out of the life of the family. No one seems upset about it, for no one ever really knew him.
RUTHIE AND WINFIELD
Ruthie and Winfield are the brats of the family. They're the kind of kids we wish we never had been, but probably were. They have all the qualities that drive parents mad. They're loud, quarrelsome, and moody. Both have an awful lot of growing up to do. Worst of all, they poke each other constantly and get the biggest kick out of tattling on one another.
But they're vulnerable, too. They need love and protection and a pat on the back now and then because life is no easier for them than it is for the older members of the family.
As the youngest in the clan, they're also the most adaptable. They take to life on the road quickly. Migrating to California is an adventure, but filled with sobering experiences like Grampa's death and Casy's arrest.
As mothers will, Ma worries about her two little ones. They seem to be growing up wild, without discipline, without manners or social grace. Ruthie is a particular problem. Joining any group of kids, she's bound to pick a fight. At the government camp she breaks up a game of croquet because she hasn't learned that in a group you have to wait your turn. At the boxcar camp, she gets into a scrap that has serious consequences.
Arguing over a box of Cracker Jack with other kids, Ruthie threatens to get her big brother after one of them. In the heat of the argument, Ruthie reveals that her brother Tom is a killer and is hiding nearby. As a result, Tom must leave the family.
Overall, Ruthie and Winfield weather the hardships of migrant life rather easily. Does their Joad blood give them the capacity to endure? Or is their youth the secret of their success? It's probably a toss-up.
GRAMPA JOAD
Even though Grampa appears only briefly in the book, he leaves a lasting impression. He's a spirited old warhorse with a foul mouth, a fiery temper, and a mischievous glint in his eyes. He does nothing in moderation: he drinks too much, eats too much, and talks all the time.
Some of what he says is nonsense, but some makes a great deal of sense. He's proud to be a Joad and overjoyed to see his favorite grandchild Tom out of prison. "They ain't a gonna keep no Joad in jail," he says.
Grampa, as the oldest Joad, is considered the head of the family, even though everyone recognizes that his mind goes haywire sometimes. At family councils, it's his privilege to speak first.
He has boundless enthusiasm for going west: "Jus' let me get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes... I'm gonna squash 'em on my face an' let 'em run offen my chin," he says on the day before the journey begins.
But the next morning he states, "I ain't a-goin'." He demands to be left behind in the country where he feels at home. Although he doesn't say it in words, he is tied to the land of his fathers, and to be wrenched away would break him.
The family must take him anyway. They overpower him by spiking his coffee with medicine. But Grampa never recovers from his stupor. He dies the next day and is buried in a roadside grave. After the makeshift funeral, Casy tells the others, "Grampa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the old place."
Grampa and the land were one and the same. Because the Joads have been transformed from farmers to migrants, Grampa had to die. He had no place in a family that settled in a new place every night.
GRANMA JOAD
Grampa had to have a wife like Granma. She has the same vocabulary, the same spunk, and the same madcap ways as her husband. She needs him to fight with, just as he needs her.
Granma has one unique quality, however. She's ferociously religious. "Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory," she yells when Tom rejoins the family. Granma has gone to prayer meetings where she wailed and moaned for God and Jesus, damned the devil, and shed her sins. She's thrilled to have Casy in her family, even though he professes to have given up preaching. She forces him to say grace at mealtime and to say a prayer over Grampa's grave.
After Grampa dies, she takes ill, never to recover. She dies on the truck while crossing the Mojave Desert, and is buried in California.
Just as Grampa had to die when he left the land, Granma had to die without Grampa. They were two bodies with a single soul. Granma's death also completes the Joads' separation from their old lives.
MULEY GRAVES
When the Oklahoma sharecroppers are evicted from their farms, Muley, the stubborn one, refuses to budge. He's bound to the land where he was born. He'd rather wander the countryside alone, like an "ol' graveyard ghos'" than join the throngs going west.
Muley inspires Grampa Joad's rebellion. Grampa claims that if Muley can stay behind and live off the land, so can he.
One of Muley's casual remarks over a campfire starts Casy thinking about the need for people to share and to work together. Muley doesn't know it, of course, but what he said changes Casy's life, and ultimately the lives of Tom, Ma, and countless others.
[The Grapes of Wrath Contents]
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OTHER ELEMENTS
SETTING In some ways The Grapes of Wrath is a travel book. In its pages we are taken on a 2000-mile journey from eastern Oklahoma to central California. If you look at a highway map of the Southwest, you can follow the Joads' progress from place to place. Accuracy was important to Steinbeck because he hoped that his book would be more than a piece of fiction; it is meant to be a social document, too.
Because the main characters are sharecroppers turned into migrants, most of the book takes place out-of-doors. So the weather, the land and water, and the road are as important to the novel as almost any character or theme.
The coming of a long drought to America's midsection in the 1930s sets the book into motion. Farmers can't survive on dried-out land. Nor can the banks that own the land make a profit when the tenant farmers don't grow enough to feed even themselves.
In contrast to the parched Dust Bowl, California is fertile and lush. Its orchards and fields grow fruit, nuts, cotton, and vegetables of every sort. It's the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey. It's paradise, except for the people trying madly to keep the migrants at bay. For hundreds of thousands of migrants, including the Joads, of course, California turns out to be a lost paradise.
To be fair, you can't blame only the citizens of California for the migrants' plight. The rains and subsequent floods contribute, too.
The migrant road- Route 66- links Oklahoma to California. Along its miles we see the filling stations, diners, and car lots that line many of America's highways even today. These sites remind us of what our country looks like and repeatedly tell the migrants that they are not wanted- unless they have money.
THEMES By and large, the major themes in The Grapes of Wrath are listed here in the order they show up in the book. It's up to you to decide which are more important than others. Reviewing the text of the novel itself will certainly help.
THE BOND BETWEEN LAND AND PEOPLE Unless you depend on the land for your livelihood, you'll probably never fully understand how strongly a man can be bound to his land. For the tenant farmers of the novel, to be torn away from their land is a shattering experience, akin to death itself. That's why Muley Graves stays behind like a "graveyard ghos'" and Grampa dies shortly after the start of the westward journey.
THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY Even though The Grapes of Wrath takes place in the 20th century, the tenant farmers rely on growing methods of bygone days. That's one reason the farmers are poor and likely to remain so. Because machines can make land profitable, landowning banks send in tractors and dozers. Machine drivers lose touch with the soil; in effect, they become nonhuman pieces of equipment. Without feeling a thing, therefore, they can rumble across the land and knock down anything in their way.
CASTING OFF THE OLD WAYS When the Joads change from farm people to road people, they have to cast off not only many of their belongings, but their habits and customs as well.
Grampa refuses to do it. Ma agonizes over throwing her family letters and clippings into the fire. Casy salts the pork even though it's "women's work." Even the leadership of the Joads must pass to Ma before the family can assume a new identity. It's a painful time for most of them, but the promise of a better tomorrow drives them forward.
THE HUMAN FAMILY People need each other every step of the way. Muley knows he has to share his rabbit with Tom and Casy. The Wilsons can't go on without assistance from the Joads. The Wallaces invite Tom to work with them. Mrs. Wainwright aids Rose of Sharon in childbirth. Rose of Sharon offers her milk to a dying man. You'll have no problem finding many more instances of people helping people in the novel.
GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE AND BY THE PEOPLE Only in the government camp at Weedpatch do the migrant people find safety and comfort. It's the federal, not the state government that provides refuge. Within the camp itself, people make the rules and select leaders. God helps those who help themselves, the saying goes, but a little help from a benevolent government doesn't hurt.
UNIONS The song "Solidarity Forever" is the anthem of the American labor movement. When workers stick together in a righteous cause, they can accomplish anything. But you have to be prepared to make sacrifices. You can't give in to threats, and above all, you must remain united. If you break with your brother, you'll be hurting both him and yourself.
GRAPES OF WRATH Anger in many guises dominates the book. Why else call it The Grapes of Wrath? The tenant farmers are angry at the landowners. Roadside characters such as the one-eyed man are angry with themselves. Californians' fear of the migrants turns to anger. And most of all, the migrants are angry. In a land of plenty, they are starving. They should be angry about that, and so should we!
QUEST FOR THE DOLLAR The pursuit of money is a perfectly legitimate activity in our society. But what happens when, in the quest for the dollar, human values are forgotten? Banks force people from their homes; big farmers eat up little farmers; landowners exploit workers; food is burned and buried; people starve. At what point does the pursuit of money turn into a crime?
ENDURANCE The Grapes of Wrath is a story of endurance. You have to marvel at how many of the characters, especially Ma Joad, can put up with such a relentless barrage of trouble, and still go on. Men must be made of sturdy stuff to keep trying in the face of adversity brought on by both nature and other men.
STYLE It's hard not to be impressed by the richness of language in The Grapes of Wrath.
Most of the writing is straightforward narrative prose. But some of the prose is highly poetic, crowded with sensual images ("The dust-filled air muffled sound more completely than fog does") and figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, and personifications ("The full green hills are round and soft as breasts"). Look especially at passages about nature, such as Steinbeck's descriptions of the drought in Chapter 1 and of California springtime in Chapter 25.
An entire chapter turns out to be an extended metaphor. The turtle (Chapter 3) exemplifies endurance and perseverance, qualities that we see demonstrated again and again by the Joads and other migrants.
Steinbeck writes dialogue as the people spoke it. Spelling is unorthodox because the migrant people drop the sounds of certain letters, like the g in words ending in ing, and often slur two words into one, as in Pa'd, meaning Pa would. The people's speech is dappled with expressions such as "a walkin' chunk a mean-mad" and "billy-goatin' aroun'." There's no doubt that the dialogue slows down your reading, but Steinbeck sought the likeness of truth, even though the characters are fictional. Besides, who'd want to read a book about migrants who sound like English teachers?
In some of the interchapters, Steinbeck uses still another style of writing. He bombards you with phrases, bits of spoken conversation, half-thoughts, expressions- a collage of words to give you an impression of a place or an event. You have to fill in the details. For example, what actually happens at the used-car lots (Chapter 7) and in the cotton fields (Chapter 27)?
POINT OF VIEW Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during the 1930s, a time of considerable social and economic upheaval in our country. The U.S. was trying to dig itself out of the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt, president at the time, inspired both undying love and fierce hatred by instituting several social-welfare programs. Most people either supported FDR or considered him an ogre.
Steinbeck belongs in the first group. He's pro-union, pro-welfare, pro-big government. And he tells the tale of the Joads with those biases right out front. We view the world through the eyes of the Joads or, in the interchapters, from the perspective of the mass of migrants. We never hear the other side of the story. Nearly every native Californian we meet is either a deputy, a guard, or a fearful citizen. California seems more like a fascist police state than a piece of the U.S.
Nevertheless, we don't have to think of The Grapes of Wrath as just a piece of propaganda, as some people say it is. While the book exposes abuse and suffering of a whole class of people, it also tells an uplifting story of courage and determination. The Joads, in the end, exemplify values that we like to think lie at the root of America's greatness.
FORM AND STRUCTURE The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family for about half a year of their lives. We meet them just after they've been thrown off their land, probably in April or May. We go with them on a long cross-country trek, which lasts, perhaps, slightly more than a month. The last time we see them, they are in a hillside barn seeking refuge from wintry rains and floods, perhaps in November or December. Exact times can't be pinned down.
The Joads' story is told chronologically. Steinbeck occasionally fills in details of the characters' past lives in two ways. Sometimes he just tells us. That's how we learn about Noah Joad's violent birth, for example. Or Steinbeck has characters talk about themselves, as Casy does, or about each other. When Tom tells Casy the story of Uncle John's ill-fated marriage, we listen, too.
Between many of the narrative chapters, Steinbeck inserts interchapters, usually short sketches of economic and social history that bear on the story. Taken all together, the interchapters comprise a colorful background montage of migrant life. (See the accompanying table of chapters and interchapters.)
You can easily divide The Grapes of Wrath into three parts. Call the first part Oppression, the time of drought and dust in Oklahoma. The second section, about the journey, can be called Exodus; and the final portion, in California, The Promised Land. In viewing the novel's structure this way, we can discern biblical parallels. The Israelites, God's chosen people, left the land of their bondage, Egypt, and wandered in the desert for many years, searching in vain for a promised land, the land of milk and honey.
© Copyright 1984 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Oct 2, 2008 17:15:18 GMT 4
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! September 27 through October 4, 2008
Censorship on Religious Grounds A Look at, The Golden CompassSynopsis The Golden Compass forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a world like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set partly in the world we know. The third moves between many worlds.
In The Golden Compass, readers meet for the first time 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Jordan College in Oxford, England. It quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own - nor is her world. In Lyra's world, everyone has a personal dæmon, a lifelong animal familiar. This is a world in which science, theology and magic are closely intertwined.
These ideas are of little concern to Lyra, who at the outset of the story, spends most of her time with her friend Roger, a kitchen boy. Together, they share a carefree existence scampering across the roofs of the college, racing through the streets of Oxford, or waging war with the other children in town. But that life changes forever when Lyra and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, prevent an assassination attempt on her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust.
It is at this time that children mysteriously began to disappear. Children, and only the children, are vanishing at the hands of what become known as the "Gobblers." Who the Gobblers are and what they want is unknown, but soon, children from far and wide are disappearing with out a trace, even Lyra's good friend, Roger.
But before she can begin her search for Roger, Lyra is introduced to Mrs. Coulter, a beautiful and bewitching woman. Mrs. Coulter is a scholar and an explorer - seemingly everything that Lyra could ever hope to be. Mrs. Coulter takes Lyra under her wing and employs her as an assistant to help in the next expedition to explore the Arctic North. On the morning she is to leave Jordan College, the Master of the school gives Lyra an alethiometer, a rare and powerful instrument with the power to reveal the truth in all things.
While under Mrs. Coulter's guidance, Lyra learns of her mentor's critical role in Church's General Oblation Board, a.k.a. the Gobblers, the party responsible for the disappearing children. It is revealed that these kidnapped children are taken to Bolvangar, a place in the far North, to participate in Dust experiments whereby they are severed from their dæmons through a process called intercision. Lyra also learns that the Church has captured and imprisoned Lord Asriel in the Arctic region of Bolvanger where he has undertaken Dust experiments of his own.
Horrified at what she has learned, Lyra and Pantalaimon flee Mrs. Coulter's home in the middle of the night and are rescued through the kindness of two gyptian men. The gyptians are a gypsy group of boat-people who live a harsh life on the water tempered by their unwavering sense of family, loyalty and love. It is the gyptians' children who have suffered most at the hands of the Gobblers, and they have vowed to travel North to rescue them. Lyra pledges to share what she knows, rescue her dear friend Roger, and ultimately find her imprisoned father. Through the gyptian elders, Lord Faa and Farder Coram, Lyra is bewildered to learn that her parents are Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter. Despite this shock, Lyra quickly learns to read the alethiometer and understand its messages. Although her alethiometer enables her to discover the truth in everything around her, Lyra is unaware of the incredible role her own life plays in the fate of the universe. Lyra is the subject of a great prophecy in which she is destined to commit a fateful betrayal that will determine the future of all worlds.
To succeed in the rescue mission for the children, the gyptians enlist the alliances of three people who come to regard Lyra dearly: Serafina Pekkala, the witch queen who reveals that the fate of universe lies in Lyra's future; Lee Scoresby, a Texan aeronaut and commander of a hot air balloon; and Iorek Byrnison, a renegade armored polar bear, deposed as king of his clan by a deceitful brother. While on their long, hard journey in the far North, Lyra and Pantalaimon are kidnapped by hunters who take them to Bolvangar, the place where all the kidnapped children have been brought. At long last, Lyra is happily reunited with Roger, but to her horror, she witnesses intercision, the gruesome Dust experiment that separates child and dæmon. Banding together, the children and their daemons escape the terrors of Bolvangar, fleeing into the safety of the gyptians, Serafina Pekkala's witches, Lee Scoreby's balloon, and Iorek Byrnison.
Although the children are rescued, the journey for Lyra and Roger is far from over. They travel further north and finally find Lyra's father, Lord Asriel. Lord Asriel has experimented with Dust as well, and has discovered its role in crossing the barriers into other worlds. He has constructed a bridge to another world, but crossing that bridge requires the energy released in an intercision. Unable to sacrifice his own child, Lord Asriel makes Roger his prey and escapes to another world. The universe has been broken and Lyra's friend lies dead, but she vows get revenge and discover the secret of Dust.From: www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/books/golden_compass.htmlI have been waiting for nearly a year to discuss, The Golden Compass. Last school year, I helped my librarian friend guide a teen reading group. My son was also a part of this 12 - 14 year old group. It was during the reading of this book that I witnessed many ridiculous reactions by people of 'faith.' Every one of our children read the book. It was not until the film boycotts and silly email chain letters came out espousing the dangers of seeing the film that local parents went into a group mind like action.
From what I gathered, the protests were started over a Snopes [known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages] alert in December of 2007, stating that the film was based on a series of books with anti-religious themes. www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp
After reading the book, we planned to take the children to see the movie. One of the boys in the group did finish the book but his parents would not permit him to go with us...His parents did not read the book. We canceled the trip when numerous parents and patrons began complaining. Not one of these people had read the book; nor did any take notice of the book during its ten year existence before the movie.
Reactions from patrons against the book were demands that the book be removed/banned from the library and criticism against my librarian friend. She was told face to face that: As a Christian, she should not be promoting the book. She should remove the book. There were numerous remarks made to her expressing disappointment with her and her brand of Christianity!
On the other hand, there was also much support in favor of the book and series. Those in favor included a local minister who used the book to open discussion on his congregation's faith and another home schooler parent who thought the book were interesting and very well written.
My opinion of The Golden Compass is that it has a unique story line and beautiful language which is many times lacking in books marketed toward American children. It is not an easy read for a younger child and is more suitable for teenagers and young adults. Our pre-teens had difficulty with the text but they did enjoy the story. I would also like to point out that the book is a fantasy, not a discourse on religious views. Concerned parents should read the book first or watch the film and then make an informed criticism. A librarian from Minneapolis had this to say:I used to be a librarian, and I had more than a few parents come up to question or complain about a book on a reading list or in a display. I always told them that controversial titles provide opportunities to read with their kids and then discuss their own beliefs, what the book seems to say, and what their children understand about each. Too many people, unfortunately, just want to program their kids, and think it's too confusing for children or perhaps too time consuming for them to TALK about what they believe. So don't take your kids if they're too young to understand the film, but don't boycott it just because it presents a point of view you disagree with. Use that to open a discussion. Besides, in the real world nothing is purely black and white - why should we insult kids by demanding that all their books, movies, TV, et al be devoid of shades of grey? I found this criticism from someone in Cape Town, South Africa:This film should be boycotted. The author is deliberately attacking Christian belief as well as Jewish and Islamic belief. Children and uninformed people should be made aware of his hidden agenda. The movie in the US is being released on December 7, the anniversary of the Pearl Harbour attack which clearly is against the majority of Christians in the US. It also comes out just before Christmas, and if parents like the film, they would want to purchase the books for their children, unaware of the hidden agenda. This is promoting atheism to children.I put the previous up because I was told by one boy in my group that his parents [Catholic] were upset because the author, Philip Pullman, was an atheist. In our world of religious bickering, I have found that some people of various faiths can and do find fault with and may attack persons of a different faith, but if you're an atheist, you're like the devil himself! I read the book as a criticism of organized religion rather than an atheistic manifesto.
I also heard many statements of concern regarding the subject of daemons in the book. One of the most original elements of Pullman's trilogy is the daemons. In Lyra's world, every human has a daemon, a visible version of the soul that takes on an animal form. One's daemon reflects one's lot in life. Servants have daemons that take the form of dogs, which are willing, friendly, and obedient animals, just as servants are expected to be. Sailors' daemons are often seabirds. A daemon can also reveal something about the state of one's soul. Mrs. Coulter, for all her outward charms, can't hide her essential nastiness and thus her daemon is a cruel golden monkey. Daemons don't take their final shape when their owners are still children. Here, Pullman points out the malleability of childhood. At the age of eleven, Lyra's character is not yet fixed. She can try out different personalities and ways of being, all of which are reflected in the different shapes of her daemon.
Now, many parents obviously took the word, daemon, to be synonymous with the word demon, or devil. My understanding of the word, daemon, is from Greek Mythology meaning: 1. any of the secondary divinities ranking between the gods and men. 2. a guardian spirit; inspiring or inner spirit. Again, we see the dangers of a fraction of the public attempting to censor reading material. These 'concerned' citizens have every right to stop their children from reading The Golden Compass if they find it objectionable, but they do not have the right to keep it from the rest of the public; which they did try to do with demands that it be taken off my public library's shelves.
I am happy to have read The Golden Compass with my son. It was a most enjoyable piece of literature and proved to be a reading challenge for my son. I am also pleased that my public library did not back down in its defense of the book and its presence on the shelves. However, I am concerned that this might, one day, not always be the case. Our public libraries have been the victims of massive government funding cuts and I have seen first hand their bending in other matters where charitable patrons have influenced administrative decisions at my local library....But, that's another topic, for another time.
Thank you, readers, for lending an ear to my observations and opinions. Next up, an interview with Philip Pullman on censorship, followed by an article on the history of censorship based on religious grounds.
Michelle "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain[/b] The censor's dark materials Censorship is a terrible thing. So thank goodness it never works, says Philip Pullmanguardian.co.uk, Monday September 29 2008 09:51 BST When I heard that my novel The Golden Compass (the name in the USA of Northern Lights) appeared in the top five of the American Library Association's list of 2007's most challenged books, my immediate and ignoble response was glee. Firstly, I had obviously annoyed a lot of censorious people, and secondly, any ban would provoke interested readers to move from the library, where they couldn't get hold of my novel, to the bookshops, where they could. That, after all, was exactly what happened when a group called the Catholic League decided to object to the film of The Golden Compass when it was released at the end of last year. The box office suffered, but the book sales went up – a long way up, to my gratification. Because they never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don't the censors realise this? In the case of The Golden Compass, the reason the book was challenged is listed as "Religious Viewpoint", a reason that appears in connection with only one other book in the top five, a picture book called And Tango Makes Three. This is based on the true story of a pair of male penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo, who for a time formed a couple and hatched the egg of a mixed-sex couple who were unable to hatch two at once. This, if you can believe it, was challenged for six different reasons: "Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group." Religious Viewpoint? Penguins? I hope the authors have done very well out of the increased sales they'll have enjoyed, but this kind of thing only invites the rest of the world to consider the American public demented. In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones. My basic objection to religion is not that it isn't true; I like plenty of things that aren't true. It's that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. Source: www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/29/philip.pullman.amber.spyglass.golden.compass.banned------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Banned and Burned: A History of Book Censorship on Religious GroundsBy Rebekah Martin Literature banned on religious grounds has been in effect for thousands of years. In Athens, around 5th century, the treatise of Protagoras was singled out as offensive. The first sentence of his treatise read, " Concerning the gods I am not able to know either that they do exist or that they do no exist (www.tertullian.org, December 2, 2003). Protagoras was exiled and all copies were of his treatise were publicly burned. Socrates was condemned to death for similar thinking. His accusation was, "firstly, of denying the gods recognized by the state and introducing new divinities, and, secondly of corrupting the young. (Haight, p.1, 1978)." In 360 B.C., Plato wrote about his ideal Republic: "Our first business will be to supervise the making of fables and legends; rejecting all which are unsatisfactory... (www.firstamendmentcenter.org December 2, 2003)." In the Roman Empire, the state and its magistrates officially controlled the religion. Livy suggests that before 186 B.C. the senate collected and burned books about soothsaying. Rome also attempted to censor The Odyssey because it portrayed Greek ideals of freedom which were a danger to Rome. The earliest book manuscripts, such as those found in Rome, Greece and China, were single or double copies, and once burned were gone forever. With the advent of the printing press in 1450 however, book circulation rose. Book burning became more symbolic than useful. Censorship was not limited to burning, and usually the publisher was prosecuted first. Only twenty years after Johann Gutenberg's invention, an official censorship office was opened in Germany. England's Henry VIII created a similar system that required all publications to be submitted to the Crown. In 1535, French king Francis I issued an edict that outlawed book printing altogether. The Roman Catholic Church created the first list of prohibited books called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. The Index served as a guide to secular censors who decided what could be printed. The Index continued to accrue titles over the centuries until it was retired in 1966 with 5,000 titles. The Spanish Church and the Irish Church both created their own lists, which were subsequently retired in the late 1960s. The Bible in its many version and translations, has a long history of being banned and burned. In the year 553, Roman Emperor Justinian forbade the use of the Hebrew Midrash, and granted exclusive use to the Greek and Latin versions of the Bible. William Tyndale began translating the New Testament in 1525 much to the chagrin of the English clergy. It became the first printed book banned in England, and it was often burned. Because of continued pressure to allow an English Bible, Henry VIII eventually allowed the Matthew's Bible, a collaboration of Tyndale and John Rogers' work. In 1555, Queen Mary commanded, that no manner of persons presume to bring into this realm any...books, papers, etc. in the name of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Miles Coverdale, Eramus, Tyndale, etc. or any like books containing false doctrines against the Catholic faith (Haight, p. 4, 1978). In Germany, Martin Luther's 1534 translation of the Bible was considered heretical and burned by the Church. The Wicked Bible, called so because of the accidental omission of the word "not" in the seventh commandment, was published in 1631. In 1900, Pope Leo XIII decreed that the vernacular translations of the Bible were only permitted if approved by the Holy See. (Haight, p.4, 1978). The Talmud has been banned for many centuries. During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church began singling out circumspect books. In 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered all Jewish books burned. By 1244, the Talmud was being burned by the wagonload in Paris. In 1415, Pope Benedict XII decreed all copies of the Talmud be sent to bishops for preservation. Jews were forbidden to have any copies of material considered to be "antagonistic" to Christianity. A brief respite from publishing bans was given by Pope Leo X in 1520, but by 1555 the ban was back in place and Jews were under pain of death to surrender all materials blaspheming Christ. In Italy some 12, 000 volumes were destroyed (Bald, 1998, p.277). The Talmud was on the original list of the Church's Index. A revision was later added in 1564 by the Council of Trent that read, "all works of Jewish doctrine were banned, except those permitted by the pope after the Jewish community offered a substantial financial "gift." (Bald, 1998, p.277)." Western Christianity attitudes towards the Talmud changed after the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that emphasized the common connection between Christianity and Jews. The Koran or Qur'an is the sacred book of the Muslim religion. Most Muslims regard any translation of the Koran as imperfect. It could only be reproduced in handwritten form. The first official Arabic version was not released until 1925. During the Middle Ages, the Crusades against the Arab nations bred an intense hostility between Christianity and Islam. An early translation was made into the Latin around 1141 by Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny. By 1215, the Church considered Muslims to be infidels and legislation was passed that restricted Muslims in Christendom. The next Arabic publishing of the Koran in Europe was in 1530 and it too was burned. In the late 17th century, Ibrahim Müteferrika secured permission from the Turkish sultan to print books, but not the Koran. There are currently 43 translations of the Koran, all unauthorized. The Koran and the Bible are the mostly widely read sacred texts. More portions of the Koran are memorized than any other similar writing (Bald, 1998, p.139-141 ) In the Soviet Union, the Talmud, the Bible and the Koran were all banned. "[Soviet] government directives to libraries stated that religiously dogmatic books such as the Gospels, the Koran and the Talmud could only remain in large libraries, accessible to students of history, but had to be removed from the smaller ones" (Bald, 1998, p.140). Banning on religious content has several aspects and has always been judged by contemporary ideas. In 1632, an astronomer named Galileo Galilei wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Galileo was a supporter of Copernicus' heliocentric theory, that the earth and other celestial bodies revolved around the sun. The book was written in the manner of a conversation between three people: "a Florentine who believes in the Copernican system, an Aristotelian supporter of the geocentric theory and a Venetian aristocrat for whose benefit they propose their arguments" (Karolides,1999, p.198). The book was structured in a way that complied with the Church's order that Galileo present the heliocentric theory as a mathematical concept rather than a "physical reality". It was obvious within the text, however, that Galileo believed the heliocentric theory to be correct. This work was crucial in establishing modern scientific methods. "First, statements and hypotheses about nature must always be based on observation, rather than on received authority; and second, natural processes can best be understood if represented in mathematical terms" (Karolides, 1999, p.198). Galileo published his book after repeated warnings not to publish Copernican theories. He wisely added a preface by a Vatican theologian that dismissed the book as an intellectual exercise. It was unsuccessful in convincing the pope. Galileo was soon incarcerated in Rome for heresy. He recanted his book and "heresy" on the morning of June 22, 1633. The book was banned, and Galileo was placed under house arrest. In 1824, a Roman astronomer named Canon Settele published a paper on modern scientific theories. The Church finally accepted "the general opinion of modern astronomers" (Karolides, 1999, p.200). It was not until the Index of 1835, however, that the names of Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus were removed. In Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, the character Fagin is described as "The Jew" and repeatedly referred to as "The Jew" throughout the book. Fagin's red hair and beard were commonly associated with ancient images of the devil. He has a hooked nose, shuffling gait, a long gabardine coat...and is portrayed like Satan, as serpent-like, gliding like "some loathsome reptile engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved" (Bald,1998, p.181). A revised edition of Oliver Twist was released in 1867, in which Dickens eliminated the references to Fagin, "The Jew" and replaced it with "he" or "Fagin". In 1949, Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York protested the use of material used in high school literature. They claimed their children should get an education free of religious bias, citing Fagin from Oliver Twist and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. In Rosenberg v. Board of Education of City of New York the Kings County Supreme Court decided that the works would not be banned from the classrooms. The judge's final decision was, Except where a book has been maliciously written for the apparent purpose of fomenting a bigoted and intolerant hatred against a particular racial or religious group, public interest in a free and democratic society does not warrant or encourage the suppression of any book...the removal of books will contribute nothing toward the diminution of anti-religious feeling (Bald,1998, p.182) More current books have been banned by the Catholic Church. In Infallible? An Inquiry Hans Küng questioned the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. Küng was a Catholic theologian, and a priest which seemed to make the matter worse. According to doctrine, "infallibility is invested in the pope when he speaks as the head of the church on matters of faith and morals" (Bald,1998, p.121). King argued that there should allowed room for errors, and the church would still prevail. He criticized Pope Paul VI's encyclical on birth control Humanae Vitae. He claimed that the gospel of Christ is ignored and papal tradition is more important. Kung writes there should be a leadership in which, "the pope exists for the Church and not the Church for the pope". When his book was published in 1970, it created tremendous controversy. In response to his book , the Catholic Church published a "Declaration Against Certain Errors of the Present Day." It confirmed and reestablished the pope and bishops' infallibility. As further punishment, Küng was barred from representing the Church, because he was "causing confusion" among believers. He was also barred from teaching Catholic doctrine, and Catholic institutions were banned from hiring him. Küng continues as a priest, and a director for the Institute for Ecumenical Research (Bald, 1998, p.123). The first book burning in America took place in 1650 when a religious pamphlet published by William Pynchon was burned in the Boston Marketplace. Modern American censorship was formed by Anthony Comstock who founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1872. The Comstock Law was created a year later after Comstock pressured Congress for "morals, not art and literature." The Comstock Law prohibited the mailing of materials found to be "lewd, indecent, filthy or obscene." Because of the law, 3,500 people were prosecuted and 350 books were banned. This included classics like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Aristophanes' Lysistra. Future classics by authors Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and James Joyce, among others, would be banned also. (www.firstamendmentcenter.org, December 2, 2003). Under the guidance of Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) party, book burning became a powerful and frequent symbol of their doctrine. On May 10, 1933 students gathered 25, 000 volumes by Jewish authors and burned them in front of Berlin University. Among the subsequent authors burned were: Jack London, Albert Einstein, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway and Heinrich Mann. Similar demonstrations followed. Students began raiding bookstores to find material for the bonfires and had to be stopped from pillaging the university libraries. In Salzburg, 15,000 people attended a "purification bonfire" of 2,000 volumes many of which were Jewish and Catholic books. It began with a schoolboy throwing a lighted book of Chancellor Schuschnigg's Three Times Austria on the pyre. During the burning the crowd joined together to sing, "Deutschland Über Alles" (Haight, 1978, p.106). The current argument takes place in school libraries and in curriculum. Most controversial books are challenged, because they contain profanity or violence, sex or sex education, homosexuality, witchcraft and the occult, "secular humanism" or "new age" philosophies, portrayals of rebellious children, or "politically incorrect", racist or sexist language (www.firstamendmentcenter.org., December 2, 2003). In the ten years between 1990 and 2000, out of 6, 364 challenges, "1,607 were for sexually explicit content, 1, 427 were for offensive language, 1, 256 were considered unsuited to age group, 737 were considered violent, 419 for promoting a religious viewpoint." Of those, "seventy-one percent of the challenges were to materials in schools or school libraries, another twenty-four were to material in public libraries. Sixty percent of the challenges were brought by parents, fifteen percent by patrons, and nine percent by administration" (www.ala.org, December 2, 2003). In a case similar to Rosenburg, Parents of New York United protested a group of books they found objectionable. These books were found in the school libraries. In most cases when a parent lobbied a complaint, a committee gathered to review the book. Instead, the school board simply removed the books without a committee. A later committee appointed by the superintendent argued that the books should be reviewed first, and a few should be placed back on the shelf. The notion was rejected however, and the books remained off the shelf. Steven Pico, a student of the district, sued the board in U.S. District Court claiming they had First Amendment rights. The district court found in favor of the board, claiming "respect for the traditional values of the community and deference to a school board's substantial control over educational content." An appeal was sent to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which sent it back to the district court. The school board sent the case to the Supreme Court. In a close 5-4 decision for the students, Justice William Brennan reasoned that the ruling was limited to the removal of books and did not extend to the acquisition of books. "Brennan also recognized that local school boards had "broad discretion in the management of school affairs and...if a board acted solely upon the ‘educational suitability' of the books in question or solely because the books were ‘pervasively vulgar" such actions would not be unconstitutional (www.firstamendmentcenter.org, December 2, 2003). In modern times, banning for religious content carries the same long-standing traits. The most common examples are using the Lord's name in vain, promoting anti-Christianity viewpoints, and defamation of the Church. The use of magic and descriptions of the occult are also frowned upon. Satanic Verses has been banned because of its anti-Muslim sentiment. All three parts of the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien have been burned as "Satanic". John Steinbeck's works especially have been cast aside because they curse the Lord's name, such as in East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. One of the most controversial books in recent times is the Harry Potter series. Their author, J.K Rowling has been called Satan renamed by numerous religious groups. The series has been condemned because of its presentation of witchcraft. It is also accused of portraying evil as good and glorifying rebellion against authority. Book banning on religious grounds is possibly the oldest form of book banning. Since the early Greeks, to the Conquistadors, to Hitler's Third Reich, the human race has questioned each other's beliefs. Power has lent one party dominion over another, power that has shaped the course of history. Many human lives have been lost, as well as useful, irretrievable books. And yet, conversely, what has been protected and what has been saved by book banning? More resources Bald, M. (1998). Banned Books Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds. Wachsberger, K. (Ed.).New York: Facts on File, Inc.. Forbes, Clarence. (2003, December 2). Roman book burning. [On-line]. Available: www.tertullian.org/artibles/forbes_books_for_the_burning.htm Haight, A. & Grannis, C. (1978). Banned Books 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. New York: R.R Boweker Company. Karolides, N. & Bald, M. & Sova, D. (1999). 100 Banned Books. New York: Checkmark Books. Mulally, Claire. (2003, December 2). Book banning. [On-Line]. Available: www.firstamendmentcenter.org/speech/libraries/topic.aspx?topic=banned_books Thomas, C. (1983). Book Burning. Westchester: Crossway Books. Unknown. (2003, December 2). The Book of common prayer. [On-Line]. Available: www.justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/.html Unknown. (2003, December 2). The Children of Gebelawi. [On-Line]. Available: www.egypt.vacationbookreview.com/egypt_91.html Unknown. (2003, December 2). Thomas paine. [On-Line]. Available: libertyonline.hypermall.com/Paine?AOR-Frame.html Unknown. (2003, December 2). Why books are banned. [On-Line]. Available: www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Association/Offices?Intellectual_Freedom3/Banned_Books_Week/Challenged Source: www.associatedcontent.com/article/80809/banned_and_burned_a_history_of_book.html?cat=38------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have some extra room, so here's one on the movie, which I thought good but couldn't possibly cover the complexities of the book...M'Golden Compass': What's God Got To Do With It? Some Christians thought Philip Pullman's novel was blasphemous. But now some of the author's fans may think the film adaptation's not provocative enough. Inside the book's long, perilous road to the screenBy Jeff Jensen In July of 2004, Chris Weitz went all the way to the Arctic Circle just to write a movie. The young filmmaker had fatefully accepted the challenge of adapting Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, and since the North Pole was a crucial locale in the book, Weitz thought tapping out the script while communing with a wintry wasteland would be really cool. Putting aside his aversion to snow, ice, and cold weather in general, he set sail from Norway on a boat packed with adventure tourists curious to see polar bears and old whaling stations. On the first day at sea, he plugged in his computer...and the ship's electricity fried his laptop. He spent the next nine days writing the script by hand. Looking back on it three years later, Weitz says, ''It was a romantic induction into the process.'' But maybe he should have considered it an omen. If all you know about New Line's The Golden Compass are the ads that make it look like another Chronicles of Narnia flick, you don't know the half of it. Sure, there's a plucky kid hero, lots of talking animals, and piles of pretty snow. A wardrobe even makes a coy cameo. But this risky $180 million fantasy is worlds away from C.S. Lewis' fuzzy Christian fairy tale. In fact, this is the anti-Narnia. Compass is adapted from the first in a trilogy of British kids' novels collectively known as His Dark Materials, which are a brainy and imaginative critique of Christian dogma and ideological tyranny. Literary critics have hailed the award-winning books as masterpieces and put Pullman on a pedestal next to J.R.R. Tolkien. But the defining struggle in trying to convert Compass into a blockbuster franchise has been in figuring out just how smart — and provocative — a film can be in today's religiously touchy culture. The film definitely pushes some buttons. It's set on an alternate Earth dominated by the Magisterium, an oppressive religious institution akin to the Catholic Church, whose God is a distant, nebulous deity known as the Authority. In this world, every human being has a ''daemon,'' an animal companion that reflects his or her conscience and embodies the soul. Golden Compass is partly the story of an adventurer and alleged heretic named Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), who is obsessed with finding the otherworldly source of the Dust, a mysterious spiritual substance that might be the cause of all human misery. And it is partly the story of a church operative named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), who has embarked on a perverse plan to purge mankind of its free spirit, the same one that inspired Adam and Eve to get on God's bad side by chomping on the apple. But above all, it is the tale of young Lyra (newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), a mischievous girl who could be the fulfillment of a prophecy that threatens the church. Witches, warrior polar bears, riverboat gypsies, and a balloon-flying cowboy are also involved. ''It's a little story about very little ideas,'' quips Craig. Oh, Bond, do be serious: This is all a devilish business, according to the Catholic League and various evangelical Christian watchdog groups. They believe Pullman's books slander their faith, celebrate irresponsible behavior, and promote despairing, soulless atheism. But if they ever get around to seeing Weitz's glittering F/X extravaganza, they'll discover his adaptation has exorcised much of Pullman's subversive spirit, a move that has alarmed the author's Web-chatty fans. Compass presented a truly tough challenge: launching a big-budget franchise based on a property that only gets darker, stranger, and riskier as it goes. (Did we mention that Lord Asriel wants to kill God?) Early reviews are divided — here's the link to the EW review — and while no one should ever discount the appeal of talking animals, New Line's bid for a new Lord of the Rings is hardly a slam dunk. One thing's for certain: The Golden Compass is proving yet again that while our culture may be filled with images of God, it sure has a devil of a time talking about Him. Source:www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20155516_20155530_20164514,00.html?print
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Oct 4, 2008 17:39:50 GMT 4
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! September 27 through October 4, 2008
THE BURNING OF BOOKS Fahrenheit 451On October 19, 1953, a young Californian named Ray Bradbury published a novel with the odd title of Fahrenheit 451. The title, Fahrenheit 451, is the temperature at which paper burns. In a gripping story at once disturbing and poetic, Bradbury takes the materials of pulp fiction and transforms them into a visionary parable of a society gone awry, in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. Meanwhile, the citizenry sits by in a drug-induced and media-saturated indifference. More relevant than ever a half-century later, Fahrenheit 451 has achieved the rare distinction of being both a literary classic and a perennial best seller.
Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future when the written word is forbidden. "Fireman" Guy Montag, enjoys his duties as a professional book-burner. He never questions the totalitarian government, nor the barbaric acts he commits in its name.
His eyes are finally opened when a young girl tells him of a time when books were legal and people did not live in fear.
Montag begins stealing books marked for destruction and meets a professor who agrees to educate him. When his pilfering is discovered, he must run for his life.
EXCERPT:It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.
He strode in a swarm of fireflies.
He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.
He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror.
Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.[/b] Yeah well, this is fiction, right? Think again. Here's a short little piece put together by a young adult that I just have to love...Way to go, new weaver!The Real Fahrenheit 451From: Thenewweaver Added: May 23, 2006 A movie about old and modern day book burnings Ray Bradbury has long been one of my favorite authors. My first exposure to Bradbury was when I was required to read, The Martian Chronicles, by my 9th grade English teacher [thank you Mr. Mercurio!] I highly recommend that you read any of his books. He is amazingly prolific. Mr Bradbury's work helped me discover my love of science fiction. From 9th grade on, I acquired 60’s copies of all sorts of scifi. Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein were my beacons at that age.
Does it surprise you that I, such a promoter of classic literature, steeped myself in scifi? In truth, certain individuals I've met have considered me somewhat of a snob in my reading tastes. How little they understand me! Some of the most thought provoking ideas I've read were found within the pages of science fiction books. A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. I've discovered all of this in my favorite scifi books.
That said, may I suggest you go out and purchase your own copy of Fahrenheit 451? And if it's not on your childrens' required reading list at school, please do share it with them; they might be denied access to it. I found the following at a digg site but could not locate the original from www.hcnonline.com/ a Houston based newspaper:Parents want to ban "Fahrenheit 451". Can you smell the irony?From: digg.com/world_news/Parents_want_to_ban_Fahrenheit_451_Can_you_smell_the_ironyhcnonline.com — "The book had a bunch of very bad language in it," Diana Verm said. "It shouldn't be in there because it's offending people. If they can't find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn't have a book at all." Alton Verm filed a "Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials" Thursday.What is it with the state of Texas?!!! Michelle PS: Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -Ray Bradbury, "Reader's Digest", January, 1994NOTES:
A shorter version of Fahrenheit 451 was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction Vol. 1 No. 5 (Feb. 1951) under the title "The Fireman."
A serialized version of Fahrenheit 451 appeared in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Censorship in the Age of Multiculturalism "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
"Fahrenheit 451" is a multimedia age horror story of genius about firemen who are paid to set books ablaze and is more important than ever in our era of 'political correctness' and shallow consumerism. Got an unpleasant reality? BURN IT! Does that hurt your 'self-esteem' or make you uncomfortable? BURN IT!
Below is an addendum where Bradbury scathingly deals with those who have tried to censor his book on censorship (imagine that!)."There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."CODA by Ray Bradbury
About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles. But, she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles? A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn't I "do them over"? Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped. Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story "The Fog Horn" in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a "God light." Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in "the Presence." The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in the Presence." Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count 'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention - shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By "firing" the whole lot. By sending them rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell. The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. "Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place. A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the "Moby Dick" mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premiers as an opera in Paris this autumn. But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with baseball bats if the drama department even tried! Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men), Or, counting heads, make and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count line and find that all the good stuff went to the males! I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I'm not sure that I wasn't. For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmild teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall. For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail. In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpire, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you. ********* Give 'em hell, Ray!Source: www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/451/451.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In March of 2002, the ACLU aptly referred to Fahrenheit 451 as a metaphor of Internet censorship. There's a warning here for our libraries too.....MFahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning? (3/17/2002) Executive Summary In the landmark case Reno v. ACLU , the Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act, declaring that the Internet deserves the same high level of free speech protection afforded to books and other printed matter. But today, all that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright flames of censorship then in the dense smoke of the many ratings and blocking schemes promoted by some of the very people who fought for freedom. The ACLU and others in the cyber-liberties community were genuinely alarmed by the tenor of a recent White House summit meeting on Internet censorship at which industry leaders pledged to create a variety of schemes to regulate and block controversial online speech. But it was not any one proposal or announcement that caused our alarm; rather, it was the failure to examine the longer-term implications for the Internet of rating and blocking schemes. The White House meeting was clearly the first step away from the principle that protection of the electronic word is analogous to protection of the printed word. Despite the Supreme Court's strong rejection of a broadcast analogy for the Internet, government and industry leaders alike are now inching toward the dangerous and incorrect position that the Internet is like television, and should be rated and censored accordingly. Is Cyberspace burning? Not yet, perhaps. But where there's smoke, there's fire. "Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig." U.S. Supreme Court majority decision, Reno v. ACLU (June 26, 1997) Introduction In his chilling (and prescient) novel about censorship, Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury describes a futuristic society where books are outlawed. "Fahrenheit 451" is, of course, the temperature at which books burn. In Bradbury's novel and in the physical world people censor the printed word by burning books. But in the virtual world, one can just as easily censor controversial speech by banishing it to the farthest corners of cyberspace using rating and blocking programs. Today, will Fahrenheit, version 451.2 a new kind of virtual censorship be the temperature at which cyberspace goes up in smoke? The first flames of Internet censorship appeared two years ago, with the introduction of the Federal Communications Decency Act (CDA), outlawing "indecent" online speech. But in the landmark case Reno v. ACLU , the Supreme Court overturned the CDA, declaring that the Internet is entitled to the highest level of free speech protection. In other words, the Court said that online speech deserved the protection afforded to books and other printed matter. Today, all that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright flames of censorship then in the dense smoke of the many ratings and blocking schemes promoted by some of the very people who fought for freedom. And in the end, we may find that the censors have indeed succeeded in "burning down the house to roast the pig." Is Cyberspace Burning? The ashes of the CDA were barely smoldering when the White House called a summit meeting to encourage Internet users to self-rate their speech and to urge industry leaders to develop and deploy the tools for blocking "inappropriate" speech. The meeting was "voluntary," of course: the White House claimed it wasn't holding anyone's feet to the fire. The ACLU and others in the cyber-liberties community were genuinely alarmed by the tenor of the White House summit and the unabashed enthusiasm for technological fixes that will make it easier to block or render invisible controversial speech. (Note: see appendix for detailed explanations of the various technologies.) Industry leaders responded to the White House call with a barrage of announcements: *Netscape announced plans to join Microsoft together the two giants have 90% or more of the web browser market in adopting PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) the rating standard that establishes a consistent way to rate and block online content; *IBM announced it was making a $100,000 grant to RSAC (Recreational Software Advisory Council) to encourage the use of its RSACi rating system. Microsoft Explorer already employs the RSACi ratings system, Compuserve encourages its use and it is fast becoming the de facto industry standard rating system; *Four of the major search engines the services which allow users to conduct searches of the Internet for relevant sites announced a plan to cooperate in the promotion of "self-regulation" of the Internet. The president of one, Lycos, was quoted in a news account as having "thrown down the gauntlet" to the other three, challenging them to agree to exclude unrated sites from search results; *Following announcement of proposed legislation by Sen. Patty Murray (D Wash.), which would impose civil and ultimately criminal penalties on those who mis-rate a site, the makers of the blocking program Safe Surf proposed similar legislation, the "Online Cooperative Publishing Act." But it was not any one proposal or announcement that caused our alarm; rather, it was the failure to examine the longer-term implications for the Internet of rating and blocking schemes. What may be the result? The Internet will become bland and homogenized. The major commercial sites will still be readily available they will have the resources and inclination to self-rate, and third-party rating services will be inclined to give them acceptable ratings. People who disseminate quirky and idiosyncratic speech, create individual home pages, or post to controversial news groups, will be among the first Internet users blocked by filters and made invisible by the search engines. Controversial speech will still exist, but will only be visible to those with the tools and know-how to penetrate the dense smokescreen of industry "self-regulation." As bad as this very real prospect is, it can get worse. Faced with the reality that, although harder to reach, sex, hate speech and other controversial matter is still available on the Internet, how long will it be before governments begin to make use of an Internet already configured to accommodate massive censorship? If you look at these various proposals in a larger context, a very plausible scenario emerges. It is a scenario which in some respects has already been set in motion: *First, the use of PICS becomes universal; providing a uniform method for content rating. *Next, one or two rating systems dominate the market and become the de facto standard for the Internet. *PICS and the dominant rating(s) system are built into Internet software as an automatic default. *Unrated speech on the Internet is effectively blocked by these defaults. *Search engines refuse to report on the existence of unrated or "unacceptably" rated sites. *Governments frustrated by "indecency" still on the Internet make self-rating mandatory and mis-rating a crime. The scenario is, for now, theoretical but inevitable. It is clear that any scheme that allows access to unrated speech will fall afoul of the government-coerced push for a "family friendly" Internet. We are moving inexorably toward a system that blocks speech simply because it is unrated and makes criminals of those who mis-rate. The White House meeting was clearly the first step in that direction and away from the principle that protection of the electronic word is analogous to protection of the printed word. Despite the Supreme Court's strong rejection of a broadcast analogy for the Internet, government and industry leaders alike are now inching toward the dangerous and incorrect position that the Internet is like television, and should berated and censored accordingly. Is Cyberspace burning? Not yet, perhaps. But where there's smoke, there's fire. Free Speech Online: A Victory Under Siege On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court held in Reno v. ACLU that the Communications Decency Act, which would have made it a crime to communicate anything "indecent" on the Internet, violated the First Amendment. It was the nature of the Internet itself, and the quality of speech on the Internet, that led the Court to declare that the Internet is entitled to the same broad free speech protections given to books, magazines, and casual conversation. The ACLU argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that the CDA was unconstitutional because, although aimed at protecting minors, it effectively banned speech among adults. Similarly, many of the rating and blocking proposals, though designed to limit minors' access, will inevitably restrict the ability of adults to communicate on the Internet. In addition, such proposals will restrict the rights of older minors to gain access to material that clearly has value for them. Rethinking the Rush to RateThis paper examines the free speech implications of the various proposals for Internet blocking and rating. Individually, each of the proposals poses some threat to open and robust speech on the Internet; some pose a considerably greater threat than others. Even more ominous is the fact that the various schemes for rating and blocking, taken together, could create a black cloud of private "voluntary" censorship that is every bit as threatening as the CDA itself to what the Supreme Court called "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed." We call on industry leaders, Internet users, policy makers and parents groups to engage in a genuine debate about the free speech ramifications of the rating and blocking schemes being proposed. To open the door to a meaningful discussion, we offer the following recommendations and principles: Recommendations and Principles *Internet users know best. The primary responsibility for determining what speech to access should remain with the individual Internet user; parents should take primary responsibility for determining what their children should access. *Default setting on free speech. Industry should not develop products that require speakers to rate their own speech or be blocked by default. *Buyers beware. The producers of user-based software programs should make their lists of blocked speech available to consumers. The industry should develop products that provide maximum user control. *No government coercion or censorship. The First Amendment prevents the government from imposing, or from coercing industry into imposing, a mandatory Internet ratings scheme. *Libraries are free speech zones. The First Amendment prevents the government, including public libraries, from mandating the use of user-based blocking software. Six Reasons Why Self-Rating Schemes Are Wrong for the Internet To begin with, the notion that citizens should "self-rate" their speech is contrary to the entire history of free speech in America. A proposal that we rate our online speech is no less offensive to the First Amendment than a proposal that publishers of books and magazines rate each and every article or story, or a proposal that everyone engaged in a street corner conversation rate his or her comments. But that is exactly what will happen to books, magazines, and any kind of speech that appears online under a self-rating scheme. In order to illustrate the very practical consequences of these schemes, consider the following six reasons, and their accompanying examples, illustrating why the ACLU is against self-rating: Reason #1: Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored. Kiyoshi Kuromiya, founder and sole operator of Critical Path Aids Project, has a web site that includes safer sex information written in street language with explicit diagrams, in order to reach the widest possible audience. Kuromiya doesn't want to apply the rating "crude" or "explicit" to his speech, but if he doesn't, his site will be blocked as an unrated site. If he does rate, his speech will be lumped in with "pornography" and blocked from view. Under either choice, Kuromiya has been effectively blocked from reaching a large portion of his intended audience teenage Internet users as well as adults. As this example shows, the consequences of rating are far from neutral. The ratings themselves are all pejorative by definition, and they result in certain speech being blocked. The White House has compared Internet ratings to "food labels" but that analogy is simply wrong. Food labels provide objective, scientifically verifiable information to help the consumer make choices about what to buy, e.g. the percentage of fat in a food product like milk. Internet ratings are subjective value judgments that result in certain speech being blocked to many viewers. Further, food labels are placed on products that are readily available to consumers unlike Internet labels, which would place certain kinds of speech out of reach of Internet users. What is most critical to this issue is that speech like Kuromiya's is entitled to the highest degree of Constitutional protection. This is why ratings requirements have never been imposed on those who speak via the printed word. Kuromiya could distribute the same material in print form on any street corner or in any bookstore without worrying about having to rate it. In fact, a number of Supreme Court cases have established that the First Amendment does not allow government to compel speakers to say something they don't want to say and that includes pejorative ratings. There is simply no justification for treating the Internet any differently. Reason #2: Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly. Art on the Net is a large, non-profit web site that hosts online "studios" where hundreds of artists display their work. The vast majority of the artwork has no sexual content, although there's an occasional Rubenesque painting. The ratings systems don't make sense when applied to art. Yet Art on the Net would still have to review and apply a rating to the more than 26,000 pages on its site, which would require time and staff that they just don't have. Or, they would have to require the artists themselves to self-rate, an option they find objectionable. If they decline to rate, they will blocked as an unrated site even though most Internet users would hardly object to the art reaching minors, let alone adults. As the Supreme Court noted in Reno v. ACLU , one of the virtues of the Internet is that it provides "relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communication of all kinds." In striking down the CDA, the Court held that imposing age-verification costs on Internet speakers would be "prohibitively expensive for noncommercial as well as some commercial speakers." Similarly, the burdensome requirement of self-rating thousands of pages of information would effectively shut most noncommercial speakers out of the Internet marketplace. The technology of embedding the rating is also far from trivial. In a winning ACLU case that challenged a New York state online censorship statute, ALA v. Pataki , one long-time Internet expert testified that he tried to embed an RSACi label in his online newsletter site but finally gave up after several hours. In addition, the ratings systems are simply unequipped to deal with the diversity of content now available on the Internet. There is perhaps nothing as subjective as a viewer's reaction to art. As history has shown again and again, one woman's masterpiece is another woman's pornography. How can ratings such as "explicit" or "crude" be used to categorize art? Even ratings systems that try to take artistic value into account will be inherently subjective, especially when applied by artists themselves, who will naturally consider their own work to have merit. The variety of news-related sites on the Web will be equally difficult to rate. Should explicit war footage be labeled "violent" and blocked from view to teenagers? If along news article has one curse word, is the curse word rated individually, or is the entire story rated and then blocked? Even those who propose that "legitimate" news organizations should not be required to rate their sites stumble over the question of who will decide what is legitimate news. Reason #3: Conversation Can't Be Rated. You are in a chat room or a discussion group one of the thousands of conversational areas of the Net. A victim of sexual abuse has posted a plea for help, and you want to respond. You've heard about a variety of ratings systems, but you've never used one. You read the RSACi web page, but you can't figure out how to rate the discussion of sex and violence in your response. Aware of the penalties for mis-labeling, you decide not to send your message after all. The burdens of self-rating really hit home when applied to the vibrant, conversational areas of the Internet. Most Internet users don't run web pages, but millions of people around the world send messages, short and long, every day, to chat rooms, news groups and mailing lists. A rating requirement for these areas of the Internet would be analogous to requiring all of us to rate our telephone or streetcorner or dinner party or water cooler conversations. The only other way to rate these areas of cyberspace would be to rate entire chatrooms or news groups rather than individual messages. But most discussion groups aren't controlled by a specific person, so who would be responsible for rating them? In addition, discussion groups that contain some objectionable material would likely also have a wide variety of speech totally appropriate and valuable for minors but the entire forum would be blocked from view for everyone. Reason #4: Self-Rating Will Create "Fortress America" on the Internet. You are a native of Papua, New Guinea, and as an anthropologist you have published several papers about your native culture. You create a web site and post electronic versions of your papers, in order to share them with colleagues and other interested people around the world. You haven't heard about the move in America to rate Internet content. You don't know it, but since your site is unrated none of your colleagues in America will be able to access it. People from all corners of the globe people who might otherwise never connect because of their vast geographical differences can now communicate on the Internet both easily and cheaply. One of the most dangerous aspects of ratings systems is their potential to build borders around American- and foreign-created speech. It is important to remember that today, nearly half of all Internet speech originates from outside the United States. Even if powerful American industry leaders coerced other countries into adopting American ratings systems, how would these ratings make any sense to a New Guinean? Imagine that one of the anthropology papers explicitly describes a ritual in which teenage boys engage in self-mutilation as part of a rite of passage in achieving manhood. Would you look at it through the eyes of an American and rate it "torture," or would you rate it "appropriate for minors" for the New Guinea audience? Reason #5: Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation. The webmaster for Betty's Smut Shack, a web site that sells sexually explicit photos, learns that many people won't get to his site if he either rates his site "sexually explicit" or fails to rate at all. He rates his entire web site "okay for minors." A powerful Congressman from the Midwest learns that the site is now available to minors. He is outraged, and quickly introduces a bill imposing criminal penalties for mis-rated sites. Without a penalty system for mis-rating, the entire concept of a self-ratings system breaks down. The Supreme Court that decided Reno v. ACLU would probably agree that the statute theorized above would violate the First Amendment, but as we saw with the CDA, that won't necessarily prevent lawmakers from passing it. In fact, as noted earlier, a senator from Washington state home of Industry giant Microsoft, among others has already proposed a law that creates criminal penalties for mis-rating. Not to be outdone, the filtering software company Safe Surf has proposed the introduction of a virtually identical federal law, including a provision that allows parents to sue speakers for damages if they "negligently" mis-rate their speech. The example above shows that, despite all good intentions, the application of ratings systems is likely to lead to heavy-handed government censorship. Moreover, the targets of that censorship are likely to be just the sort of relatively powerless and controversial speakers, like the groups Critical Path Aids Project, Stop Prisoner Rape, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Watch, and the various gay and lesbian organizations we represented in Reno v. ACLU . Reason #6: Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers. Huge entertainment conglomerates, such as the Disney Corporation or Time Warner, consult their platoons of lawyers who advise that their web sites must berated to reach the widest possible audience. They then hire and train staff to rate all of their web pages. Everybody in the world will have access to their speech. There is no question that there may be some speakers on the Internet for whom the ratings systems will impose only minimal burdens: the large, powerful corporate speakers with the money to hire legal counsel and staff to apply the necessary ratings. The commercial side of the Net continues to grow, but so far the democratic nature of the Internet has put commercial speakers on equal footing with all of the other non-commercial and individual speakers. Today, it is just as easy to find the Critical Path AIDS web site as it is to find the Disney site. Both speakers are able to reach a worldwide audience. But mandatory Internet self-rating could easily turn the most participatory communications medium the world has yet seen into a bland, homogenized, medium dominated by powerful American corporate speakers. Is Third-Party Rating the Answer? Third-party ratings systems, designed to work in tandem with PICS labeling, have been held out by some as the answer to the free speech problems posed by self-rating schemes. On the plus side, some argue, ratings by an independent third party could minimize the burden of self-rating on speakers and could reduce the inaccuracy and mis-rating problems of self-rating. In fact, one of the touted strengths of the original PICS proposal was that a variety of third-party ratings systems would develop and users could pick and choose from the system that best fit their values. But third party ratings systems still pose serious free speech concerns. First, a multiplicity of ratings systems has not yet emerged on the market, probably due to the difficulty of any one company or organization trying to rate over a million web sites, with hundreds of new sites not to mention discussion groups and chat rooms springing up daily. Second, under third-party rating systems, unrated sites still may be blocked. When choosing which sites to rate first, it is likely that third-party raters will rate the most popular web sites first, marginalizing individual and non-commercial sites. And like the self-rating systems, third-party ratings will apply subjective and value-laden ratings that could result in valuable material being blocked to adults and older minors. In addition, available third-party rating systems have no notification procedure, so speakers have no way of knowing whether their speech has received a negative rating. The fewer the third-party ratings products available, the greater the potential for arbitrary censorship. Powerful industry forces may lead one product to dominate the marketplace. If, for example, virtually all households use Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape, and the browsers, in turn, use RSACi as their system, RSACi could become the default censorship system for the Internet. In addition, federal and state governments could pass laws mandating use of a particular ratings system in schools or libraries. Either of these scenarios could devastate the diversity of the Internet marketplace. Pro-censorship groups have argued that a third-party rating system for the Internet is no different from the voluntary Motion Picture Association of America ratings for movies that we've all lived with for years. But there is an important distinction: only a finite number of movies are produced in a given year. In contrast, the amount of content on the Internet is infinite. Movies are a static, definable product created by a small number of producers; speech on the Internet is seamless, interactive, and conversational. MPAA ratings also don't come with automatic blocking mechanisms. The Problems With User-Based Blocking Software in the Home With the explosive growth of the Internet, and in the wake of the recent censorship battles, the marketplace has responded with a wide variety of user-based blocking programs. Each company touts the speed and efficiency of its staff members in blocking speech that they have determined is inappropriate for minors. The programs also often block speech based on keywords. (This can result in sites such as www.middlesex.gov or www.SuperBowlXXX.com being blocked because they contain the keywords "sex" and "XXX."). In Reno v. ACLU , the ACLU successfully argued that the CDA violated the First Amendment because it was not the least restrictive means of addressing the government's asserted interest in protecting children from inappropriate material. In supporting this argument, we suggested that a less restrictive alternative was the availability of user-based blocking programs, e.g. Net Nanny, that parents could use in the home if they wished to limit their child's Internet access. While user-based blocking programs present troubling free speech concerns, we still believe today that they are far preferable to any statute that imposes criminal penalties on online speech. In contrast, many of the new ratings schemes pose far greater free speech concerns than do user-based software programs. Each user installs the program on her home computer and turns the blocking mechanism on or off at will. The programs do not generally block sites that they haven't rated, which means that they are not 100 percent effective. Unlike the third-party ratings or self-rating schemes, these products usually do not work in concert with browsers and search engines, so the home user rather than an outside company sets the defaults. (However, it should be noted that this "standalone" feature could theoretically work against free speech principles, since here, too, it would be relatively easy to draft a law mandating the use of the products, under threat of criminal penalties.) While the use of these products avoids some of the larger control issues with ratings systems, the blocking programs are far from problem-free. A number of products have been shown to block access to a wide variety of information that many would consider appropriate for minors. For example, some block access to safer sex information, although the Supreme Court has held that teenagers have the right to obtain access to such information even without their parent's consent. Other products block access to information of interest to the gay and lesbian community. Some products even block speech simply because it criticizes their product. Some products allow home users to add or subtract particular sites from a list of blocked sites. For example, a parent can decide to allow access to "playboy.com" by removing it from the blocked sites list, and can deny access to "powerrangers.com" by adding it to the list. However most products consider their lists of blocked speech to be proprietary information which they will not disclose. Despite these problems, the use of blocking programs has been enthusiastically and uncritically endorsed by government and industry leaders alike. At the recent White House summit, Vice President Gore, along with industry and non-profit groups, announced the creation of www.netparents.org, a site that provides direct links to a variety of blocking programs. The ACLU urges the producers of all of these products to put real power in users' hands and provide full disclosure of their list of blocked speech and the criteria for blocking. In addition, the ACLU urges the industry to develop products that provide maximum user control. For example, all users should be able to adjust the products to account for the varying maturity level of minors, and to adjust the list of blocked sites to reflect their own values. It should go without saying that under no set of circumstances can governments constitutionally require anyone whether individual users or Internet Service Providers to run user-based blocking programs when accessing or providing access to the Internet. Why Blocking Software Should Not Be Used by Public Libraries The "never-ending, worldwide conversation" of the Internet, as one lower court judge called it, is a conversation in which all citizens should be entitled to participate whether they access the Internet from the library or from the home. Just as government cannot require home users or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to use blocking programs or self-rating programs, libraries should not require patrons to use blocking software when accessing the Internet at the library. The ACLU, like the American Library Association (ALA), opposes use of blocking software in public libraries. Libraries have traditionally promoted free speech values by providing free books and information resources to people regardless of their age or income. Today, more than 20 percent of libraries in the United States offering free access to the Internet, and that number is growing daily. Libraries are critical to realizing the dream of universal access to the Internet, a dream that would be drastically altered if they were forced to become Internet censors. In a recent announcement stating its policy, the ALA said: Libraries are places of inclusion rather than exclusion. Current blocking/filtering software prevents not only access to what some may consider "objectionable" material, but also blocks information protected by the First Amendment. The result is that legal and useful material will inevitably be blocked. Librarians have never been in the business of determining what their patrons should read or see, and the fact that the material is now found on Internet is no different. By installing inaccurate and unreliable blocking programs on library Internet terminals, public libraries which are almost always governmental entities would inevitably censor speech that patrons are constitutionally entitled to access. It has been suggested that a library's decision to install blocking software is like other legitimate selection decisions that libraries routinely make when they add particular books to their collections. But in fact, blocking programs take selection decisions totally out of the hands of the librarian and place them in the hands of a company with no experience in library science. As the ALA noted, "(F)ilters can impose the producer's viewpoint on the community." Because, as noted above, most filtering programs don't provide a list of the sites they block, libraries won't even know what resources are blocked. In addition, Internet speakers won't know which libraries have blocked access to their speech and won't be able to protest. Installing blocking software in libraries to prevent adults as well as minors from accessing legally protected material raises severe First Amendment questions. Indeed, that principle that governments can't block adult access to speech in the name of protecting children was one of the key reasons for the Supreme Court's decision in Reno v. ACLU. If adults are allowed full access, but minors are forced to use blocking programs, constitutional problems remain. Minors, especially older minors, have a constitutional right to access many of the resources that have been shown to be blocked by user-based blocking programs. One of the virtues of the Internet is that it allows an isolated gay teenager in Des Moines, Iowa to talk to other teenagers around the globe who are also struggling with issues relating to their sexuality. It allows teens to find out how to avoid AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases even if they are too embarrassed to ask an adult in person or even too embarrassed to check out a book. When the ACLU made this argument in Reno v. ACLU, it was considered controversial, even among our allies. But the Supreme Court agreed that minors have rights too. Library blocking proposals that allow minors full access to the Internet only with parental permission are unacceptable. Libraries can and should take other actions that are more protective of online free speech principles. First, libraries can publicize and provide links to particular sites that have been recommended for children. Second, to avoid unwanted viewing by passersby (and to protect the confidentiality of users), libraries can install Internet access terminals in ways that minimize public view. Third, libraries can impose "content-neutral" time limits on Internet use. Conclusion The ACLU has always favored providing Internet users, especially parents, with more information. We welcomed, for example, the American Library Association's announcement at the White House summit of The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace for Parents and Kids, a "comprehensive brochure and Web site combining Internet terminology, safety tips, site selection advice and more than 50 of the most educational and entertaining sites available for children on the Internet." In Reno v. ACLU, we noted that Federal and state governments are already vigorously enforcing existing obscenity, child pornography, and child solicitation laws on the Internet. In addition, Internet users must affirmatively seek out speech on the Internet; no one is caught by surprise. In fact, many speakers on the Net provide preliminary information about the nature of their speech. The ACLU's site on America Online, for example, has a message on its home page announcing that the site is a "free speech zone." Many sites offering commercial transactions on the Net contain warnings concerning the security of Net information. Sites containing sexually explicit material often begin with a statement describing the adult nature of the material. Chat rooms and newsgroups have names that describe the subject being discussed. Even individual e-mail messages contain a subject line. The preliminary information available on the Internet has several important components that distinguish it from all the ratings systems discussed above: (1) it is created and provided by the speaker; (2) it helps the user decide whether to read any further; (3) speakers who choose not to provide such information are not penalized; (4) it does not result in the automatic blocking of speech by an entity other than the speaker or reader before the speech has ever been viewed. Thus, the very nature of the Internet reveals why more speech is always a better solution than censorship for dealing with speech that someone may find objectionable. It is not too late for the Internet community to slowly and carefully examine these proposals and to reject those that will transform the Internet from a true marketplace of ideas into just another mainstream, lifeless medium with content no more exciting or diverse than that of television. Civil libertarians, human rights organizations, librarians and Internet users, speakers and providers all joined together to defeat the CDA. We achieved a stunning victory, establishing a legal framework that affords the Internet the highest constitutional protection. We put a quick end to a fire that was all but visible and threatening. The fire next time may be more difficult to detect and extinguish. Appendix: Internet Ratings Systems How Do They Work?
The Technology: PICS, Browsers, Search Engines, and Ratings The rating and blocking proposals discussed below all rely on a few key components of current Internet technology. While none of this technology will by itself censors speech, some of it may well enable censorship to occur. PICS: The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) is a rating standard that establishes a consistent way to rate and block online content. PICS was created by a large consortium of Internet industry leaders, and became operational last year. In theory, PICS does not incorporate or endorse any particular rating system the technology is an empty vessel into which different rating systems can be poured. In reality, only three Third-party rating systems have been developed for PICS SafeSurf, Net Shepherd, and the de facto industry standard RSACi.1 Browsers: Browsers are the software tool that Internet users need in order to access information on the World Wide Web. Two products, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape, currently control 90% of the browser market. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is now compatible with PICS. That is, the Internet Explorer can now be configured to block speech that has been rated with PICS-compatible ratings. Netscape has announced that it will soon offer the same capability. When the blocking feature on the browser is activated, speech with negative ratings is blocked. In addition, because a vast majority of Internet sites remain unrated, the blocking feature can be configured to block all unrated sites. Search Engines: Search engines are software programs that allow Internet users to conduct searches for content on a particular subject, using a string of words or phrases. The search result typically provides a list of links to sites on the relevant topic. Four of the major search engines have announced a plan to cooperate in the move towards Internet ratings. For example, they may decide not to list sites that have negative ratings or that are unrated. Ratings Systems: There are a few PICS-compatible ratings systems already in use. Two self-rating systems include RSACi and Safe Surf. RSACi, developed by the same group that rates video games, attempts to rate certain kinds of speech, like sex and violence, according to objective criteria describing the content. For example, it rates levels of violence from "harmless conflict; some damage to objects" to "creatures injured or killed." Levels of sexual content are rated from "passionate kissing" to "clothed sexual touching" to "explicit sexual activity; sex crimes." The context in which the material is presented is not considered under the RSACi system; for example, it doesn't distinguish educational materials from other materials. Safe Surf applies a complicated ratings system on a variety of types of speech, from profanity to gambling. The ratings are more contextual, but they are also more subjective and value-laden. For example, Safe Surf rates sexual content from "artistic" to "erotic" to "explicit and crude pornographic." Net Shepherd, a third-party rating system that has rated 300,000 sites, rates only for "maturity" and "quality." Notes 1 While PICS could be put to legitimate use with adequate free speech safeguards, there is a very real fear that governments, especially authoritarian governments, will use the technology to impose severe content controls. Credits The principal authors of this white paper are Ann Beeson and Chris Hansen of the ACLU Legal Department and ACLU Associate Director Barry Steinhardt. Additional editorial contributions were provided by Marjorie Heins of the Legal Department, and Emily Whitfield of the Public Education Department. This report was prepared by the ACLU Public Education Department: Loren Siegel, Director; Rozella Floranz Kennedy, Editorial Manager; Ronald Cianfaglione, Designer. Source: www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/15145pub20020317.htmlSo ends our 2008 Banned Books Week. Please refer to our pages here again, as I do post other articles and books occasionally through out the year.
When they convert the televisions here next February, I'm done with TV...completely. I'll have much more time for reading. My son, Addam, can read for an entire lifetime and not finish what I have in the house. They're stopping the publishing of books, you know. Some big stores are beginning to download and bind the printed pages upon request. Perhaps my house will become a literary museum!
I love my books....Particularly the quality bound editions....to hold them, to lay and read any where I want with them, to gather with my fellow readers and discuss the ideas we find in them is pure joy. I'll die and be buried with a book in my hand!
Michelle
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 21, 2008 15:30:07 GMT 4
U.S. Court of Appeals Restricts Patriot Act Gags There are numerous articles on page 1 of this thread reporting on the library gag orders and brave librarians who stood up to them, protecting patrons' rights:airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=america&action=display&thread=100 Subject: Press Release: U.S. Court of Appeals Restricts Patriot Act Gags Date: 12/18/2008 3:17:18 PM Eastern Standard Time For further information, contact: Chris Finan, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, (917) 509-0340 For Immediate Release U.S. Court of Appeals Restricts Patriot Act Gags NEW YORK, NY, December 18, 2008 - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday established important restrictions on the power of the federal government to impose gag orders on recipients of National Security Letters (NSLs). Currently, the recipient of an NSL cannot challenge a gag order for one year, and the chances for success are limited by a provision of the law that requires judges to regard as "conclusive" government assertions that secrecy is necessary to protect national security. The Second Circuit ruled that these provisions limit First Amendment rights. "The NSL ruling is an important step toward reestablishing the First Amendment rights that the Patriot Act took away," ABFFE President Chris Finan said. ABFFE is the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. ACLU has challenged several NSLs, including one issued to a consortium of Connecticut libraries. An NSL is an order that the FBI uses to obtain electronic records from telephone companies, Internet service providers (ISPs) and anyone else who provides the public with access to the Internet, including libraries and bookstores. The FBI does not need a judge's approval to issue an NSL. It issued nearly 200,000 in the four-year period from 2003 through 2006. The Second Circuit case involves a challenge to the government's power to gag an ISP that received an NSL. ACLU argued it is difficult if not impossible for the ISP to challenge this restriction on its First Amendment right to comment publicly on the case. The Second Circuit agreed. It ruled that in the future the FBI must seek judicial approval for a gag at the request of a recipient. The court also ruled that it will not be sufficient for the FBI to declare that the gag is necessary for national security: it must provide a judge with good reasons for maintaining the gag. The decision is available here. ABFFE joined the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, the American Association of University Professors, the Freedom to Read Foundation and PEN American Center in filing an amicus brief in the case. It is available here.
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