This critical essay explores a topic that is of great relevance in today’s political and legal climate, the banning of books. It takes a less traditional look at this issue, through the lens of secondary characters in novels. The banning of books does not only preclude the discussion of the primary issues raised by the main characters, but is even more insidious by eliminating the forum for exploring the more subtle, but equally impactful messages derived from studying the often more nuanced secondary characters. I will cite examples from two novels deemed controversial and at risk for banning, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

   Although typically overlooked, secondary characters in novels are key representations of the overarching messages, which become apparent through their character arcs. Slaughterhouse-Five depicts a World War 2 soldier suffering through post-traumatic stress Disorder that manifests through “time traveling” into his memories and imagining Tralfamadorian aliens, while The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood depicts the totalitarian society of Gilead in which women are severely stripped of any previous rights and forced into involuntary servitude of reproduction. The characters Edgar Derby from Slaughterhouse-Five and Moira from The Handmaid’s Tale both endure extreme trauma, oppression, death, and war, however despite their juxtaposing character arcs and contrasting ways of coping neither are able to escape that traumatic oppression, as both succumb to painful fates. Ultimately, this reveals the dire importance of bringing awareness to oppression and trauma’s impact on individuals in our society through books. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five’s overall purpose is to draw attention to the horrors and negative impact of war on humanity, illustrated through Edgar Derby’s ironic and tragic death.

   Derby, the most morally righteous and selfless person in the novel, is a secondary character who illustrates the irony of supporting a system that is only going to harm him. At the beginning of the novel, he is the most physically fit even in his older age, the ideal soldier, who bribes an officer to let him into the army although he is too old (Vonnegut 83). Furthermore, after a Nazi-supporting Howard Campbell gives a demoralizing speech, Derby is the only one described as a noble “character” speaking of the “freedom and justice” that encompasses the American dream they’re fighting for (Vonnegut 164). Here, Vonnegut simultaneously depicts Derby as the most benevolent and courageous character, but who also idealizes war and its false positive outcomes. And yet, he ends up dying for taking a simple teapot. After surviving the bombing of Dresden, he is “caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs” and is later “shot” (Vonnegut 214). Despite being the best and most ideal soldier, he’s still shot, which is incredibly ironic. Derby embodies a character who glorifies war as something noble and willingly goes along with it, even though it does not benefit him in the slightest. Through Derby, Vonnegut conveys how even the fittest of individuals, the most optimistic and kind-hearted, cannot survive war unscathed. The irony in him surviving every other horror thrown his way during World War 2 but finally being murdered for such a simple crime reveals the horrid nature of war at its roots; how it’s catastrophic, senseless, and bloody, as well as excruciatingly traumatizing to the general population, supporting why one shouldn’t glorify war.

   While Edgar Derby subjects himself to the system, Moira rebels against oppression but ultimately faces the same outcome; a tragic ending. Her arc begins as someone who is forced into the torturous life of a handmaid and becomes a victim of oppression and rape. Handmaids in Gilead—the dictatorship regime setting of the novel—are solely for “breeding purposes, two-legged wings, that’s all” and society is so incredibly oppressive that the habits and freedoms of times before the regime “appear to me now lavish,” (Atwood 136, 113). This society is so utterly restrictive that attempting to flee or break the many oppressive laws results in torture or being hung on the Wall. Although Moria rebels by fleeing the Red Center that imprisons Handmaids and in doing so “had power now…she’d set herself loose,” (Atwood 133), she eventually is recaptured, once again a victim of the system she so desperately tried to escape. Offred, another handmaid, later remarks that Moira has been subdued so much that her voice had “indifference, a lack of volition” (Atwood 249). Moira’s character arc ultimately has a depressing ending, despite her initial rebellious nature which soon dwindles into nothing. The purpose of The Handmaid’s Tale is to illustrate the alarming outcome of systemic oppression against women, and through Moira, Atwood reveals the horrifying impact where women’s value and role is reduced to nothing more than a vessel to reproduce. Moira exhibits how even the most rebellious and unbreakable individuals can be destroyed by a totalitarian state, and how trauma can destroy the spirit of the strongest of us. Books bring awareness to these crucial issues, preventing the horrors that occur in them from being repeated in real life. 

   Both Slaughterhouse-Five and The Handmaid’s Tale seek to bring awareness to the horrors of war and systemic oppression and rape, through different means. Topics discussed within these two novels, as well as topics such as awareness about racism, queer identities, rape, mental health, trauma, etc. that are discussed in other books, affect over 4 million students and children enrolled in America’s schooling system. In only one year, over 674 books explicitly address LGBTQIA+ themes and characters, 993 books feature prominent characters of color and address racism, 357 contain “description of sexual assault,” and 64 reflect religious minorities like “Jewish, Muslim and other faith traditions,” were banned. If these topics continue to be banned then children will become slowly unaware of the truths, warnings, and lessons discussed in those books. This will create an uneducated and insensitive next generation that perpetuates harmful stereotypes and ideas, leading to events such as war discussed in Slaughterhouse-Five, and a system that severely oppresses women like in The Handmaid’s Tale. These sensitive but important themes are illustrated through the two secondary characters, as Derby learns the devastating reality of war while Moira identifies as a lesbian and values women’s rights, highlighting their importance in ensuring that destructive ideas do not repeat themselves. 

   Society needs all books, and those books need their secondary characters. Although some may argue that secondary characters don’t provide any insight to the larger meanings of novels, we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss these secondary characters as they hold often overlooked significance. In reference to the Chekhok’s gun literary trope, it can be defined as the principle that every element incorporated within a story in great detail should be necessary in the overall story because if the writer hadn’t included it, it wouldn’t be important (Perelman). That same redirect must apply to secondary characters as well because every element that is elaborated on within a story, including those secondary characters, hold meaning and purpose in the overall narrative. If secondary characters weren’t important, the author wouldn’t have included them at all. Furthermore, the two specific secondary characters Edgar Derby and Moira are equally as important as all the other secondary characters, as well as the other primary characters, in literature. If they weren’t incorporated, both novels’ larger messages would be lost on some and not imprinted nearly as strongly on others.

  Ultimately, these two secondary characters provide thoughtful and crucial insights into the larger messages within novels, such as war and death. This directly ties to the banning and mislabeling of books, as some of those secondary characters have queer or minority identities, or perhaps have values in regard to topics of oppression that hateful groups seek to eliminate, making the novels targets of being banned. This only further silences the voices and ideas conveyed through these secondary characters. While Edgar Derby in Slaughterhouse-Five has a positive outlook and willingly goes along with the system of war but still gets shot in the end, Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale rebels against oppression but is recaptured and unhappy, both enduring significant trauma and will never be the same. Slaughterhouse-Five and the Handmaid’s Tale are two contrasting works, but they both share the premise of discussing these painful themes as a lesson for the individual to learn from, the reasoning behind both becoming banned and challenged novels. Banning works of literature is destructive to both individuals and society by suppressing individual thought and discriminating against larger groups and their values, which affects our society’s development as a whole.

Works Cited:

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale, Anchor Publishing, 1986, pg. 113, 133, 136, 249.

Johnson, Nadine, and Jonathan Friedman. “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Ban

Books.” Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, 4 Apr.

2023, pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/.

Perelman, Britton. “Everything You Need to Know about Chekhov’s Gun.” ScreenCraft, 1 Sept.

2021, screencraft.org/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-chekhovs-gun/.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. Random House Publishing, 1969, pg. 84, 164, 218.