Theme Of Censorship In The Moon Is Down By J. D. Salinger

On the subject of censorship, Stephen Chbosky once said, “Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” Few know this better than controversial authors John Steinbeck and Jerome Salinger. While America has always prided itself on being the land of the free, the truth is that we do not always enjoy giving everyone a fair voice— sometimes due to religious or moral reasons, political dissension, or even our own discomfort with change. Steinbeck and Salinger’s literary works both undeniably broke the status quo of their time, causing huge criticism and uproar, while simultaneously becoming some of the most beloved works of their eras.

Steinbeck’s simple childhood
The drama was described by John Mason Brown as, “one of the finest, most pungent, and most poignant realistic productions.” His later writings throughout the 1940’s and 50’s were seen as a decline by many critics, though Steinbeck felt like they were some of his best. The public harshly criticized these works, mainly astonished and appalled that he would humanize the enemy in his war novel, The Moon is Down, which was published during World War II in 1942. His apparent support for communism also brought him large amounts of criticism throughout his later career. Steinbeck led an extremely successful literary career, his body of work speaking for itself as some of the most influential, controversial, and highly read works in
Salinger’s most famous literary work, “The Catcher in the Rye”.
Undoubtedly his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye deals with a teenage protagonist’s struggle of being expelled from various different schools, especially an elite preparatory school. The novel serves as social commentary through teenage adolescent eyes by expounding of the topics of loyalty, duplicity, and the seeming “phoniness” of adulthood. In many ways, the protagonist closely relates to Salinger; Salinger himself, when asked said, “My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book… It was a great relief telling people about it.”

While very highly enjoyed, Salinger also received much criticism regarding his book. The book’s forthrightness regarding sensitive and immoral activities as well as its generous use of obscenities caused it to become a target for many conservatives. In the 1970’s, the novel was the most frequently censored book across the nation, while simultaneously being the second most frequently taught novel (following Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath) in public high schools across America. Salinger’s later writings were similar to his pre-The Catcher works, they gained him some popularity, but not much. At this point in his life, he began strongly practicing Zen Buddhism which influenced some of his