Comparing Hitchcock's The Birds: Book And Movie

The Birds, the film version, is more clear and accurate to represent which is more successful. The novel is a story about a family who lives on a peninsula in England and deals with multiple attacks from different species of birds. The movie is a late work up about bird problems just as the story“The Birds” has. On the other hand, in the movie, towns people that live near the sea come into problems with bird attacks but do not take it serious at first. Although both versions of the story attempt to leave a lasting impact on their audiences, Alfred Hitchcock’s film is ultimately more successful due to the director’s use of mood, settings, and visuals. Daphne Du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” written in 1952 took place on a peninsula in

England. The story began talking about Nat Hocken’s life and how he only worked three days a week due to a wartime disability and was married with children. The text says, “In autumn great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy, spending, themselves in motion; now wheeling, circling the sky; now setting to feed on the rich, new-turned soil; but even when they fed, it was as though they did so without hunger, without desire” (Du Maurier 1). This gives the story a grim description of the mood. This takes away from the story because I cannot tell if the story is going to talk about Nat’s life or the frightening birds. In the text the story is about flocks of birds attacking people and their homes, and how people are trying to protect themselves.
Furthermore, Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The Birds helped hold my interest the most because I am more of a visual person because when i am reading what is going on i am nonvisual. Seeing the people in the movie being attacked by the birds made me feel like I was being attacked by the birds. Also, due to me being a visual person graphics in a movie are more effective because I feel like I can get into the story of it more. The people running down the street made me feel like I was running and out of breath as well. For example, in the movie when the birds attacked one of the main characters Melanie and cut her head it makes me feel like my head was cut and I reached to grab my head like I was in pain as she was. When the birds are swarming around the people it makes me crouch down like they are coming to attack me. There was a scene in the movie when Melanie went to check on the kids at school and the birds began to swarm outside at the playground. The teacher tried to keep the kids quiet as possible to not disturb the birds. This scene created an eerie feeling I cannot imagine if I came out of my school and there were birds all over the sidewalk. Panic would stop me in my footsteps. When I watch a movie I want to feel, if it is sad and makes me want to cry, if it is happy and makes me want to laugh, or action packed I want to feel like i am in the performer’s positions.
The story “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier did not hold my attention one bit. It was alright but Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds” was better. Though both pieces of work were good the words of the novel were not interesting and did not hold my attention at all. I could not capture what the author is describing because my imagination is not active enough to picture what the author was saying but a movie being visual takes me where the characters are. Hitchcock’s “The Birds” makes me think twice when I see a flock of birds.