Why Catcher In The Rye Should Not Be Banned

The book, Catcher in the Rye, is commonly banned all over the country; whether it’s libraries or schools. It should not be banned because overall it’s a perpetually good book with good lessons to learn. Does it have profanity and other things like it, yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a book worthy of reading. My reasoning for believing that Catcher in the Rye should not be banned is, first of all, it teaches important lessons, second, it’s wrong to ban any sort of possible knowledge, and third, it’s a schools job to teach about different issues and ignoring them is a bad way to go about it. So to start off, how does The Catcher in the Rye teach important lessons? Well, we see Holden going through so many things. Such as mental health issues (which are especially a huge topic in today's society) “What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window” (Salinger 116-117). In the quote, it’s shown that Holden is having severe issues with his mental health. He wants to jump out the window and basically cease to exist. Throughout the book, we see all of his issues continuously come up in all of his

Instead of ignoring certain books that cover different issues, why not teach children about how to handle certain situations. Like for example how in The Catcher in the Rye, how Holden is a frequent smoker and also paid for a prostitute at one point. “You’re trying to chisel me” “Nobody’s tryna chisel nobody”. In these quotes, we saw how bad buying a prostitute turned out. Maurice (the pimp) came back and stole more money from Holden than he originally said was necessary to buy Sunny for a throw. It would be so good for a school to take it upon themselves to talk about all the things that could happen in a situation like that and how Holden might have actually been lucky. There are so many situations where that could’ve wound up with Holden