Looking for Alaska by John Green has been a hotly debated book for almost ten years. As soon as it cooled off of the presses, it seemed, the novel was immediately under fire. Despite parent complaints and the uneasiness of society centered around this book and others like it, Looking for Alaska should not be banned. The most common objection about the book is the sexual content depicted in it. It has been called lewd, garbage, and filth, among other things. The scene in question concerns two students, one being the main character Miles, beginning to engage in sexual experimentation. Parents have complained that this passage is obscene and damaging enough to have the book be banned. However, when considering the first amendment, Cornell Law writes that, “Yet, key components of the current obscenity test stem from the U.S. Court of Appeals decision in United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses, which determined that a work investigated for obscenity must be considered in its …show more content…
Therefore, considering Looking for Alaska as a sum and not in its parts, the novel cannot be banned under the first amendment and the right to free speech. John Green also had a comment on this. In a video, later included in an article published by the Guardian, he states, “Text is meaningless without context. What usually happens with Looking for Alaska is that a parent chooses one page of the novel to send to an administrator and then the book gets banned without anyone who objects to it having read more than that one particular page” (Coles, 2). What happens with Looking for Alaska, as John Green said, is that people take it at face value on a few pages instead of delving deeper into the book. The phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ comes to mind when this is discussed. Or, rather, ‘don’t judge a book by a few pages’. Teacher Emily Veatch further illustrates this point in her position to her school board in a Kentucky high