We’re in the middle of 2015’s Banned Books Week, September 27 to October 3. And our post calvin theme for the month is “elements.” While deciding what angle I wanted to take for our theme, I yoked these two ceremonious topics with the help of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Just think of it! Banned Books! Fire! Fire is an element! Huzzah! So, without further ado, I present for consideration the following elements that stoke the fires of the rile-able.[1]
- Racial Issues
- Encouragement of “Damaging” Lifestyles
- Blasphemous Dialog
- Sexual Situations or Dialog
- Violence or Negativity
- Presence of Witchcraft
- Religious Affiliations[2]
- Political Bias
- Age Inappropriate
Granted, many of these elements should rightly be handled with care, caution, and sensitivity. Degradation for degradation’s sake, shock factor, deliberate harm and prejudice should give rise to more than our eyebrows alone: conversation is key here, as is the necessary exchange of ideas and perspectives. There’s more at stake here than burning witches, as John Stuart Mill makes clear in his “On Liberty”:
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
So let’s celebrate the fiery element of those banned books which smoke out the assumptions and biases we hold. The catalyst they provide is a Pentecost of perceptions, the beauty of flaming tongues affixed to the mind, and the resilience of what’s left behind, even among the ashes.
[1] Courtesy of this libguide from Butler University.
[2] Read: “unpopular religions.”
Jacob Schepers (Calvin ’12) is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (2014), a winner of the 2013 Outriders Poetry Project competition. His poetry has appeared in Verse, The Common, PANK, The Destroyer, and others. He lives in South Bend, IN, with his wife, Charis, and two sons, Liam and Oliver. He is both an MFA student and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame.
