When The Eye first decided last fall to theme our book discussion around censorship, I asked myself, “Where do book bans fit into this concept?” It does seem obvious that by banning a book, its words and themes are removed from a population’s ability to understand or consider them. But I wondered how people went about making those decisions, to lobby for the removal or banning of books from particular institutions? What would make some groups deem literature worthy of being banned? According to The First Amendment Museum, the top three reasons are sexual content, offensive language, and being unsuited to the age group.
In the last two years, book bans have been slowly increasing in America: according to PEN America, from July 2021 to June 2022, their Index of School Book Bans listed 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles. For the greater part of book banning history, it has been parent led groups or individual libraries petitioning for the removal/review of certain literature. The news in 2023 hasn’t been any better for books, as now there is state level legislature being passed, under which it is allowable for certain government appointed groups to review and remove titles they have deemed inappropriate.
After a student suggested we choose The Handmaid’s Tale as our Campus Reads choice for a banned book to explore, I asked myself, “Well, where does the novel fit into this, as well as the censorship issue?” I quickly realized the novel fits into both the censorship and book banning issue in several facets. In the traditional sense of how books are banned based on content, there have been several reasons, up to and including: sexual themes, anti-Christian ideals, profanity and violence, as well as political messaging. Beyond that, you have a sense of irony that a book about the removal of words from a fictional society is being removed from our own society. Atwood writes a scene in the novel where Offred, the protagonist, is sent to the market where she is observing a store that sells dresses. She describes the huge wooden sign that's in the shape of a golden lily, and here Atwood writes, “you can see the place, under the lily, where the lettering was painted out, when they decided that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us” (Atwood 25). Words as temptation is a powerful metaphor, one that alludes to the fear the rulers of Gilead, the location in which the novel takes place, have for things like free thought and knowledge amongst the social classes. It’s here also that we can see another reason this book fits into the bigger conversation about book bans and censorship: Control.
Gilead wishes to control the members of its new society through pointed social class systems and the removal of language; this is illustrated by the often limited conversation even amongst the characters. As Offred begins her “relationship” with the Commander, one of several possible antagonists, he brings her contraband, the most striking of which are books and magazines that she reads with gusto: “I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished ...” (184) she tells the reader. The power of those words as sustenance, enough to give her the same strength as a meal; a power she would not have attained without the words contained within the illicit copies of Reader’s Digest or Mademoiselle he shared with her. As she plays the contraband scrabble game with the Commander she spells words like valance, quince, and zygote:
I hold the glossy counters with their smooth edges, finger the letters. The feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an eyeblink of it. Limp, I spell. Gorge. What a luxury. The counters are like candies, made of peppermint, cool like that. Humbugs, those were called. I would like to put them into my mouth. They would taste also of lime. The letter C. Crisp, slightly acid on the tongue, delicious. (139)
Atwood has created the power of letters, and in turn words, from Offred’s observation of the game. These letters and words sustain her, strung together they create a meal, a freedom; not just for Offred in those brief moments but for all of us, as we access and take in the power of a narrative that shows us ideas and identities outside of our own: the what-could-be and what-if. Sometimes the unknown creates fear in us, but without confronting that fear we can never learn.
The novel itself, book bans, and censorship all create a cautionary tale. A book that is removed from the shelves loses its voice; its relatable content that might make a reader feel less alone is lost. It takes from the population the ability for a reader to consider a theme that is outside their comfort zone and to learn from it. During the discussion group on the NHTI campus concerning the topic of censorship, the head of our English department, Alan Lindsay, pointed out another facet that I hadn’t previously considered on the banning of books: that for every large title we hear about that goes onto a list of “Must be Read Banned Books,” there are titles from lesser-known authors whose voices are then completely unheard, stories lost from those who also have something important to say and share.
Book bans aren’t likely to end any time soon, nor are the endless conversations over censorship in all its forms. The Handmaid’s Tale will assuredly continue to find itself on and off those lists for what I suspect will be the foreseeable future, but with an author like Atwood, her voice against book bans will continue to be strong. In May/June of 2022, with the help of Sotheby’s auction house, she auctioned off an unburnable copy of the novel, with all proceeds benefiting PEN America. If we continue to use our words to stand up against the sort of regimes and agendas that would continue to take these stories from us, by remembering that the power and strength in those letters is nothing to fear but to be learned from and respected, then we can stay ahead of a world that goes hungry for the sustenance of literature.