Banning Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Is it ever just to ban a book over the inclusion of controversial material? In Cold Blood written by Truman Capote has been an example of a book put under scrutiny for containing controversial content. Although the reasons for the opposition are clear to see in the novel, the complaints toward the book are not substantial enough to ban the book from schools. Capote includes some amounts gore and strong language in the novel, however nothing mature students are not able handle. The novel is based on a murder that occurred in 1959, and it has been speculated that Capote sympathizes with one of the two killers. However this has been highly misinterpreted as Capote is empathizing and not sympathizing. In Cold Blood is a classic piece of American literature that deserves to be apart of the

While the murder scene present within In Cold Blood is gory, young teens are often exposed to violence just as gruesome, if not more so, than seen in the novel. One example of this is modern video games. 72% of all teens, both genders, play videos games (Greenwood). The trend of violent shooter games has been around for the past decade, and has continued to grow to this day. Currently one of the most popular video games is Fortnite, a game in which 100 players collect weapons and materials and try to eliminate all other players to be the last alive. The game, as of January 19 2018, has 45 million total players players (Barrett). This is a game that involves killing other players, and it is currently the most popular game among teens. Teens play games like this everyday, when compared to a violent game, the murder scene within In Cold Blood is something high school student can handle with ease. Similar to this modern movies contain strong violence and gore. According to an article titled Exposure of US Adolescents to Extremely Violent Movies, the film Scary Movie was seen by more than 10 million children out of