The Webster's New World College dictionary (2005) defines novels as relatively long fictional prose narrative and films as a sequence of photographs projected on a screen in such a rapid succession that they create an optical illusion of movement (p.529 & p.988). These two genres have been the main topic of an age-old debate. The debate revolves around the question, which are better novels or films? People tend to have different opinions on whether books or movies tell a better story.The debate continues to grow due to Hollywood making more and more movies based on books. To illustrate my views on this debate, I will be comparing and contrasting the novel and film versions of William Golding's The Lord of the Flies and Toni Morrison's Beloved. While both novels and films provide their audience with a great form of entertainment, each genre has it’s pros and cons, and deciding whether a novel or film tells a better story is dependent on the audience’s particular preferences. Novels allow the reader to create the images, voices, and background of the story, using their imagination to visualize the story for themselves. On the other hand, a good director can take a great piece of literature and turn it into an amazing visual experience. However, the film is dependent on the director's vision and audience has little say on how the story is portrayed. I would rather read novels than watch films because novels provide better story experiences for their audiences through increased creative freedom through imagination, lack of time limits, increased exposure, and the social experience it provides. I will be using two novels turned films for my analysis of this topic. I will be using examples from Golding's The Lord of the Flies and Morrison's Beloved.... ... middle of paper ... ...Agnes, M. Ed. of the book. (2005). The 'Secondary' of Dictionary (Fourth Edition) -. Canada
Many time in our lives, we have seen the transformation of novels into movies. Some of them are equal to the novel, few are superior, and most are inferior. Why is this? Why is it that a story that was surely to be one of the best written stories ever, could turn out to be Hollywood flops? One reason is that in many transformations, the main characters are changed, some the way they look, others the way they act. On top of this, scenes are cut out and plot is even changed. In this essay, I will discuss some of the changes made to the characters of the Maltese Falcon as they make their transformation to the ?big screen.?
The book Ender's game is better than the movie Ender’s game due to more detail within the story allowing a better connection with the characters. The book had more detail, more emotion and feeling then the movie. The book went in the eyes of Ender himself where as the movie went in the eyes of the camera. The book showed us what Ender thought, what he felt, the Movie showed us what the camera saw. People like a deeper connection, it makes them feel good and attracts them to what they are reading. Ender’s game is a very interesting book, it shows us that there is always someone in power, it shows us that we can’t always have peace and quiet as we want, we must fight for our freedom under these conditions, and what is done is done and we must move
Throughout the novel several different characters are introduced to the reader, such as Ralph, Jack, Simon and Piggy. With all these characters presented to the reader, one can get to see into their minds-eye, which allows the reader to analyze their character. In this case one could examine their basic morals and distinguish between the person’s natural instinct to rely on civilization or savagery to solve their problems. The author of the novel, William Golding, had a “first-hand experience of battle line action during World War II” which caused him to realize, “[that] The war alone was not what appalled him, but what he had learnt of the natural - and original- sinfulness of mankind did. It was the evil seen daily as commonplace and repeated by events it was possible to read in any newspaper which, he asserted, were the matter of Lord of the Flies” (Foster, 7-10). This being said by Golding leads one to the central problem in the novel the Lord of the Flies, which can be regarded as the distinction between civility and savagery. This can be seen through the characters that are presented in the novel, and how these boys go from a disciplined lifestyle, to now having to adapt to an unstructured and barbaric one in the jungle.
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the representation of childhood as times of tribulation and terror along with the community accepted portrayal of innocence shapes the theme of civilization vs savagery.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies portrays the lives of young British boys whose plane crashed on a deserted island and their struggle for survival. The task of survival was challenging for such young boys, while maintaining the civilized orders and humanity they were so accustomed too. These extremely difficult circumstances and the need for survival turned these innocent boys into the most primitive and savaged mankind could imagine. William Golding illustrates man’s capacity for evil, which is revealed in man’s inherent nature. Golding uses characterization, symbolism and style of writing to show man’s inhumanity and evil towards one another.
He starts his essay by complaining “The language of criticism dealing with the film adaptation of novels has often been profoundly moralistic, awash in terms such as infidelity, betrayal, deformation, violation, vulgarization, and desecration, each accusation carrying its specific charge of outraged negativity” (54). He claims that a more effective criticism will be based in “contextual and intertextual history” (75), and less concerned with vague ideas of fidelity. He believes that absolute fidelity is impossible due to (1) the difference in medium between novel and film, (2) the lack of a single absolutely correct reading of a novel, and (3) the intertextuality of all novels and films. He claims that: “Each medium has its own specificity deriving from its respective materials of expression” (59), and explains that the written word is the novels only component of expression, while the film has more components such as “moving photographic image, phonetic sound, music, noises, and written materials” (59). Therefore, certain changes are inevitable.
The psychological being of mankind is complex and intricate in many ways. How people envisage and respond to their environment relates back to psychological elements. In Lord of the Flies, Golding expresses his views on mankind being inherently evil. His allegorical representation supports his view of mankind being baneful with scenes of cults, rape, and death. Throughout the book Golding continues to symbolize that human nature is drawn to savagery and innocence is spurious.
From a structural perspective, movies and novels appear as polar opposites. A film uses actors, scripts, and a set in order to create a visual that can grab and keep the attention of their viewers. However, an author strives to incorporate deeper meaning into their books. Despite these differences in media, 1984 and The Hunger Games present unique, yet similar ideas.
Often times when watching a movie or reading a book, people don’t always pay attention to parts involving different psychologies or real world events. From comparing both a movie and a piece of text, people see how different their analysis of things could be. When watching a movie, people may pay more attention because the director can draw them in using sounds and objects that stand out. With books and novels, there aren’t always those sights and sounds to pull in the reader's attention. Therefore, people don’t always pay attention to fine details within the text that could help understand what is going on. When comparing the two pieces of literature together, it is easy to notice those little details that are skipped over after analysing the texts better. Authors and directors try and incorporate different events or scenes within their work to try and show how something could play out in real life. People, in one point of their life, could be stranded on an island with a bunch of strangers and be forced to try and survive. Or they could come from Africa and be forced to survive public high school for the first time in your
Lord of the Flies provides one with a clear understanding of Golding's view of human nature. Whether this view is right or wrong is a point to be debated. This image Golding paints for the reader, that of humans being inherently bad, is a perspective not all people share. Lord of the Flies is but an abstract tool of Golding's to construct the idea of the inherent evil of human nature in the minds of his readers. To construct this idea of the inherent evil, Golding employs the symbolism of Simon, Ralph, the hunt and the island.
The first chapter of George Bluestone’s book Novels into Film starts to point out the basic differences that exist between the written word and the visual picture. It is in the chapter "Limits of the Novel and Limits of the Film," that Bluestone attempts to theorize on the things that shape the movie/film from a work of literature. Film and literature appear to share so much, but in the process of changing a work into film, he states important changes are unavoidable. It is the reasoning behind these changes that Bluestone directs his focus, which is the basis behind the change. He starts to look at the nature of film and literature, as a crucial part in the breakdown of this problem. It is only through a discussion into nature of each of these, that Bluestone can discover where film and literature seperate, and also develop a close to accurate theory on the laws that direct the course of change from novel to film.
There is a also the new phenomenon of novelization. When Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations was filmed for the last time so far in 1998, lots of people wanted, as usual, wanted to read the book on which the film based itself. For a number of inexperienced young readers, however, Dickens’ original was too much of a challenge. Intead they chose to read the light version of the story, based on the film screenplay – a so called novelization. Naturally, tjis is a controversial type of novel but some people maintain that sometimes it is a good thing that young people read books at all, and that a light version is far better than no version. In any case, the reading of the novel is stimulated by the film adaptation.
Also, books usually have more characters and give continued suspense so that the reader will be hooked or addicted to finish the book to find out the story. On the other hand, movie producers need to eliminate so many details about the story in order to squeeze everything into one to two hours. Due to this, those people who love detail information about stories usually prefer books than movies as movies does not have a detailed information about the story. Furthermore, reading books can not only enhance the reader’s vocabulary and creativity, but also increase their reading and writing skills, while watching movies only provides entertainment (Lee, wordpress.com).
Many people go to the movies because they are intrigued by the story that it presents. A lot of people may not realize that these movies come from books full of much more. Much more details, much more thrill than movies could ever create. Books are a door that will take us into a world full of adventure, in a way that movies will never be able to. Books are better that the movies because they give readers more details, they are easy to carry around, and they create a unique world to each reader.