What is the
purpose of censorship? It should not be
to prevent access to a work simply because of personal dislike or
disagreement. Many people may think a
particular work should be censored because they find the ideas or messages
personally offensive. They have no true
practical reasons for not wanting other people to read the work. And then on the other hand, there are those
who want a work censored because they firmly believe that the ideas expressed
in the work may cause a significant impact on the audience. This is the true purpose of censorship: to protect society from what the censor
believes are harmful ideas. Kurt
Vonnegut’s famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five has been censored for a
variety of reasons, some of which I agree with, and most of which I disagree
with. One issue presented in the novel
which I firmly believe has grounds for censorship is religion. There are certain passages in the novel that
convey ideas that could be received as anti-Christian, causing readers,
particularly young ones, to question Christianity and reconsider their faith, a
consequence which is indeed negative.
Several passages
in the novel portray Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, in a
completely irreverent and demeaning fashion, a fashion that could prove
damaging to the faith of a young, vulnerable Christian reader. Here is one passage that is particularly
demeaning:
The visitor from
outer space made a gift to Earth of a new gospel. In it, Jesus really was
a nobody, and a
pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had...
And then, just
before the nobody died, the...voice of God came crashing done. He told
the people that he
was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator
of the Universe throughout all eternity.
God said
this: From this
moment on, he will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who
has no
connections! (109-110)
Not only is Jesus referred to as a
“nobody” and a “bum”, but the whole idea that Jesus died on the cross to save
the world is ignored. The last sentence
of the passage implies the exact opposite: because of His suffering on the
cross, Jesus is going to seek revenge instead of granting forgiveness. Moreover, up to this point in the novel there
has been a generally negative attitude toward all humans and their
fallacies. By this point, the reader may
have already developed the same sentiments towards the human race as the
narrator and is beginning to see Earth from a different perspective, a
perspective making these anti-Christian ideas seem tempting or interesting to a
young reader, especially one who is frustrated with trying to understand
exactly what the bible is saying. In
addition to the irreverent portrayal of Jesus Christ, there is also further
irreverent portrayal of His death; the potential effects of this portrayal are
not unlike those mentioned previously.
In a short passage early in the novel, the narrator is describing
Billy’s crucifix: “Billy’s Christ died horribly. He was pitiful. So it goes” (38). I believe (as I’m sure many other Christians
do) that Christ’s death should not be pitied.
It should be appreciated humbly and graciously. Furthermore, the ending phrase “So it goes”
sort of brushed His death aside, as if to say “Oh well” or “That’s life”. All together, these three small sentences
take the holiness out of Christ’s death, which again is unacceptably irreverent
and harmful to young Christian readers.
Aside from
conveying anti-Christian messages, this novel also conveys atheistic messages
by implying that heaven does not exist; such messages are intolerable from a
Christian point of view, since the Christianity is, of course, based on
God. Billy Pilgrim, the main character
in the novel, spends eternity traveling through time to different parts of his
life. Never does he go to heaven or
hell, and nor will he ever, according to the narrator. When Billy dies, “it is simply a violet light
and a hum. There isn’t anybody else
there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there”
(143). This implies that a heaven with
God does not exist, which is an anti-Christian concept. Young readers of the novel could think that
the idea of time-traveling for eternity is plausible, and therefore think that
the idea of no heaven is plausible, too.
And if a person decides not to believe in heaven, they may very well
decide that there is no God either.
The passages I
have mentioned thus far are passages that could be damaging to the faith of
young Christian readers. I think a
distinction should be made between these passages and other passages with
religious content that I personally dislike, yet would not use as grounds for
censorship of Slaughterhouse-Five. For
example, during a war scene, the narrator describes a gun shot as sounding
“like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty” (34), an analogy that implies not only that
God is a person, but also that he wears pants.
Another passage that I dislike is “The Earthlings had had a bad week on
the market before that. They had lost a
small fortune in olive oil futures. So
they gave praying a whirl. It
worked. Olive oil went up” (202). This illustrates prayer merely as a device to
get what you want. Near the end of the
novel, the phrase “The Son of God was as dead as a doornail” (203) is used, a
phrase that is simply disrespectful, since we usually associates lowly things
such as squashed bugs as being “dead as a doornail”. Although I frown upon these passages because
the first and third ones disrespect the Lord and the second one suggests misuse
of prayer, I do not think they would have a significant negative impact on
society. I doubt that a reader would
reconsider his or her respect for God simply because of reading these
relatively trivial passages. The
passages criticized previously differ because they carry much stronger anti-Christian themes than
these less extreme passages do. Saying
that Christ is a nobody who really doesn’t love us is much more severe than
implying that God is a person or saying that when Christ died, he was “dead as
a doornail”. I make this comparison to
show that I am arguing in favor of censoring the novel not simply because of my
personal tastes, but because of the larger impact the novel will have on the
reader.
Remembering the
purpose of censorship, I do not make petty claims, such as insisting that the
short excerpts recently mentioned are valid reasons for censorship, or the fact
that the Lord’s name is taken in vain twenty-three times in the novel is a
valid reason. These are not acceptable
reasons, because the short excerpts alone do not have the potential to be
significantly harmful, and because we often hear the Lord’s name misused in
everyday life. But passages containing
new, different, yet not totally unbelievable anti-Christian ideas could indeed
have a negative impact on society. It is
important that such sacrilegious ideas remain out of reach to vulnerable young
minds.
