In the speech "An End To Audience," Margaret Atwood, says that "literature as we know it, is in serious danger of becoming extinct" (13). Reading is being suppressed by various methods. Books are being banned from school libraries because they "describe various levels of sexual activity" (Milam). Taken out of libraries shelves because they contained "seven-hundred uses of profanity, and depict alcohol consumption" (Stepzinski). Not to mention the books like Harry Potter, that are being burned by Christians because they believe that it is "nothing but witchcraft . . . evil is hidden behind the face of an innocent boy with little glasses" (Jackson). Laws are also created in order to impede authors from writing on certain topics, such as the Canadian War Measures" Act of 1914. All of these are suppressing methods, they are censorship of important material. Information that someone is waiting to tell us about but can not do so because they are impeded, restrained, or too controlled by these obstacles. According to Atwood, this is what will cause literature to become extinct, and in order to stop this from happening the audience must react to the problem soon.
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Maybe this is what is scaring most of the readers who go off and ban books from school libraries. "You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before" (Atwood 17). Parents are afraid that books may change the way their children act after they have read books with explicit material. They are petrified because they think that their children will go off and do the same things as a character in a book. The book "Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas," was on the edge of being ban off a Middle School in Oregon after Linda Rutherford, parent of an eight grade student, claimed that "the references to the female anatomy do not foster the kind of respect we would want our children to have" (Milam), it describes various levels of sexual activity in the fictional diary of a fourteen year old girl (Milam).
