It really shocked me in class that To Kill a Mockingbird was the one book that I really saw people take a stance on being for censorship in class. This has always been one of my favorite novels, and re-reading the text I'm really starting to pick up on the raw form of the novel. Yes, the text is racist and it does invoke a lot of emotion. However, this is coming from Scout's point of view and although she might seemly overly mature to the readers, she is still learning about the world around her. She is still a child. As a child she doesn't have a grip on racism, she doesn't fully realize what it is and how she could potentially be racist herself. I think these things reflect in parallel the racism of the text, of a child who is thrown into this event and is forced to look at the world around her in a new light.
As for censoring this text in any form...I'm just really against it. This text is raw and it's vivid, and yes it will make people angry, sad, and conformable, but isn't that what literature is supposed to do? A book that can rise up emotions inside of you, that's a book you're going to remember and reflect on later. Personally, I want a book that's going to make me think, that's going to question what I believe in, that's going to affirm what is right and wrong to me. It's so clear to me to see how To Kill a Mockingbird conveys how disgusting racism is and how disgusting people can be, even if it does so by shoving racism right in our face. Plus, when it comes down to censoring certain words or passages in the text, or even certain forms of the novel....aren't we just adding more emphasis to these forbidden words and passages? I feel like censoring them almost gives them more power, it's like trying to hide an elephant in the room. I'd rather just have it out in the open, rather than this uncomfortable cover up that is impossible to hide without completely destroying the novel.
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