My journal is about Harry Potter and book burning. How book burning might not be a practice we use anymore, book banning certainly is.
For my journal, I looked at the article “Fanning the Flames: The Golden Age of American Book Burning,” by Rob Boston. While reading this article, I became intrigued by the idea of book burning and book banning. While the article doesn’t discuss book banning, I believe it’s nearly the same idea as book burning. In the journal, I will be discussing why I believe certain content was burned and how book banning affected Harry Potter.
The idea of book burning was a way to prevent people from gaining knowledge of certain things. Some books, people believed, contained nefarious things. Most of the books burned were books that contained ideas about sex and magic. The idea of book burning reminded me a lot of the witch hunts during Puritan time. People were looking for a problem where there was none.
Boston begins the article by discussing The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Boston states that some books were banned for decades because, “pressure from religious communities or actions by self-appointed and legally dubious municipal boards that sought to suppress “vice.”” These organizations went out and found books that they perceived to be immoral and wicked. Most of these organizations most likely had the backing of the church or were organized by the church. As we’ve discussed earlier, religion plays a big factor in the idea of banning things.
My one problem with the article is that Rob Boston does not seem to cater enough attention to book banning. The only thing he states, “Every year, the American Library Association compiles a complete list of censorship attempts.” I feel like Boston could’ve gone more in depth with book banning. Several times in my rural high school, we weren’t allowed to read certain books in English classes because of their content. That sounds a lot like why books were burned. While book burning may not exist anymore, book banning is still alive and well.
This brings me to how Harry Potter factors into this whole idea. Harry Potter is a book that is often seen on the ban list. While Boston argues that most of the religious for censorship died, I disagree because of Harry Potter getting banned. The book series is about friendship, bravery, and finding out who you are, while those who ban it may see only one thing: magic. As we previously discussed, witchcraft is an enemy of the church. Magic is something that is viewed as unnatural in the world and not given to the person by God. People still don’t let their children read the book series because of this idea of magic.
I like how we did the same article, but had different takes on it. I agree than book banning and burning are very similar in their purpose, and I like that you put this in your article. My only point would be to express the your own positive or negative reasons for book banning and also why fear makes us look beyond the good qualities in Harry Potter.
Hey, Johnna! As usual, I’ll separate my comments by paragraph so it’s easier for you to follow along. 🙂
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Paragraph One
Your first paragraph kind of just feels like a summary of your paper, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, it could just use a couple of expansions to make it feel like it has information that is relevant to the rest of the paper without just stating what’s to come. For instance, you could say why the article made you intrigued by the idea of book burning and book banning – what about book burning tied it all into book banning for you, since the article itself didn’t discuss book banning?
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Paragraph Two
I think you could combine the two sentences, “Some books, people believed, contained nefarious things,” and “Most of the books burned were books that contained ideas about sex and magic,” into something like, “Some books, people believed, contained nefarious things like ideas about sex and magic.” The same point is gained, but stated in a more concise way, and has a kind of humorous tone to it – especially if you italicize sex and magic for emphasis; it seems like you don’t personally think sex and magic to be nefarious, and that would drive the point home without you having to state that outright.
You could also expand upon the comparison to witch hunts – what specific problems did they find in books (could be a location for a quotation from the reading) and how did that compare to a more specific issue they looked for in “witches?”
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Paragraph Three
You’ve got a quote from the reading here but no page number, so I would work one in if possible. Additionally, a lot of the paragraph here is a summary, so it would be useful to expand upon the quotations and significant points you outline here by stating why they believed was immoral or wicked that they searched for, and also to explain why these things were “bad enough” to warrant book burnings. Also, while you mention witch hunts in the previous paragraph, you don’t really discuss religion as a whole with the concept of banning things here, so you may want to reworkt the previous paragraphs to have more religious context.
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Paragraph Four
It feels like there should be more discussion here on what Rob Boston /did/ discuss rather than what he didn’t – more quotations on book burnings rather than his lack of attention to book bannings would emphasize the issue. You could also provide examples of books you weren’t allowed to read and what content made them taboo in your school, and compare them to the content that got books burned in the past to help make your point.
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Paragraph Five
You say “most of the religious for censorship died” and I think you meant to say “most of the religious reasons for censorship died.” While I think your reasoning for Harry Potter being banned is sound, I also feel that your journal ends rather abruptly – it could be useful to reiterate that although the Harry Potter books are not being literally burned, they are figuratively burned due to its bannings.
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Those are all of the comments I have for now, although I do think you still need to put at least one more quote from the reading into your journal!