Kaitlyn Chow

Argument Essay

Rough Draft

         There is many arguments on whether or not the book Looking For Alaska should be banned or not because of it’s inappropriate content. Looking For Alaska is about a boy named Miles Halter who starts high school at a boarding school named Culver Creek. He starts out to be a very innocent, very naive boy. However, as the book progresses, he starts to change by breaking rules with his friends, doing things such as smoking and drinking on campus, setting up multiple pranks and breaking into dorm rooms. This content has caused many questions for students, teachers and schools to decipher whether or not this content is appropriate for young adults. Looking For Alaska by John Green should be removed from middle school libraries because it contains many inappropriate issues and influences young adult readers with them.

         Many would like to ban the book Looking For Alaska because of the content in the book. For example, in the article “Banned Books Awareness: Looking For Alaska” a parent protested that it “went against what she was trying to teacher her child.” It was banned shortly after as pornography in Knox County, Tennessee. In Tennessee, Looking For Alaska banned the book from class reading lists as well, claiming that it was “too racy.” It might be considered racy because of it’s sexual content and bad behaviors as well. An example in the book was on page 126, when Miles and Lara are alone and Miles gets a “blow job.” It was mentioned in the article, “Tennessee School District Bans Novel Over Teen Sex Scene,” when a district in Tennessee said that, “two pages in particular were graphic enough in sexual description that we felt it wasn’t appropriate.” This particular scene included using words like “penis” and depicted a clear image in the readers mind of the “blow job.” A big part of why many would also ban this book is because it make the reader feel uncomfortable with it’s content. Readers want to read something that takes them into another world, but not make them feel insecure or uncomfortable.

         The content in this book was also not appropriate for young adults readers, as many claim. Looking for Alaska has been “challenged for sexual content, explicit language and characters consumption of alcohol.” A specific example is on page 94, “Alaska went in alone I walked out the door five minutes later . . . three cartons of cigarettes, five bottles of wine and a fifth of vodka.” As you can see here, they consume lots of alcohol in this book, not to mention the fact that they are all under the age of twenty-one. In addition, this book also “appears on the American Library Association's list and the most frequently challenged books in 2012.”  This book shows many bad influences that is not appropriate for young adult readers.

         Although, it is also argued that Looking For Alaska should not be banned. Parents objecting the prohibition of this book say that the book, “isn’t pornographic in even the broadest sense of the term as the most objectionable word used in the realistically-rendered sex passage is “penis.” This word however, is hardly used in any young adult books because most authors know that there would be a lot of controversy over the use of that word. In addition, the word was used in sexual context, not by describing a part of a human body. Therefore I argue that this is pornography. To further explain why this book should not be banned, John Green, the author himself, made a video in response to all the controversy between the book being banned. He said, “I am extremely grateful to all the teachers and librarians . . .who understand that I am not out to corrupt teenagers, and who further understand the importance of reading books critically and thoughtfully as a whole, rather than focusing on individual scenes ripped from their context.”  How exactly though, are the scenes in this book being “ripped from their content?” John Green wrote those particular scenes of sex, drinking, smoking, pranking, hazing and stealing on purpose. Not in a way to teach however, because it influences readers more than it would prevent young adult readers to do these things.

            And so we have it, Looking for Alaska should be banned because of these inappropriate issues in the book. You have seen the many scenes where there are words in the book that aren’t for young adults, bad influences on the readers. There is cursing, hazing, underage drinking and stealing. So many things that are frowned upon by many, they are in this book. It should be banned because of the way that John Green writes about it, and makes the characters not care about their behaviors, and that they don’t think it’s wrong.