Why Beloved Should Be Banned

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Pages: 4

Toni Morrisons book “Beloved” should be banned from the Riverside High School curriculum because of the sexual material, language, and violence depicted in the book. Books are typically banned from school curricula because they either include violence, touch on racial issues, encourage a damaging lifestyle, are not age appropriate, or any combination of the above. Books that hold one or even more of these traits are inappropriate for teens to read because they will negatively affect the reader. The Book “Beloved” shows sexual actions being depicted that are appropriate for teens to read because they can damage the developing teens. Morrison’s book has several inappropriate sexual scenes that make it seem as if Paul D’s actions are acceptable, while in reality they are inappropriate and have led to the banning of the book from many high school …show more content…
There have been instances where the teaching of Beloved has caused kids to have night terrors and have damaged them emotionally. This is definitely evident in Laura Murphy’s case, her son was in an AP course which was reading Morrison’s “Beloved” he soon began to have night terrors because of the graphic content contained inside the book. He later refers to the books as disgusting and gross(washington post). Morison starts the book with a graphic description of a mother killing her innocent newborn baby, “...a housed palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes... were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil (pg 6)”. While some try to argue that censoring a book is equivalent of taking away freedom of speech or shielding art from the public eye they don’t realize that many times developing young teens regardless of maturity can’t handle phrases and descriptions like the ones painted in Morrison’s