Plastics: A Comparison of The Film The Graduate Vs. The Novel

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Charles Webb’s timeless novel The Graduate tells a story of a naive college student who has an affair with his parent’s good friend. However, its success was not based on the story, the sensation was on how the story was told. In Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic The Graduate based on the novel, young Benjamin Braddock is a rising scholar with no direction. Unaware of his promising life he finds himself troubled and confused as to what he wants. The film brought the novel to life with authentic characters with sympathy and edge, the novel The Graduate was the foundation of one the most successful and iconic films in history.
Charles Webb the author of The Graduate was fresh out of college when he wrote the novel in 1963. Only twenty-four years old he produced one of the most influential stories ever told, about the seduction of an older woman towards a young man. The story was based on one of Webb’s fantasies which the reader most definitely gets sense of. In what world would you find a beautiful, charming, experienced, seductive woman wanting the pleasure of a small, young, naïve boy that just graduated college? “The Graduate was about going to college and then actually it was a lot of things, I got interested in the wife of a good friend of my parents and realizing it might be better to write about it, than do it.” (Charles Webb). Charles Webb distinguishably produced fictional characters that were the audience’s private fantasies.
The film’s director Mike Nichols, one of the most influential directors on Broadway at the time, read the novel and immediately wanted to work on it. Although he was in production of [Who’s afraid of] Virginia Woolf he gave the project to different writers until he finally got his hands on it to do it him...

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...ere done seamlessly. The suttle differences between the two make this one of the most influential films in American history. The use of musicality in the film also made the film a success and Simon and Garfunkle’s contribution made people even sing the star character of the films name and is referenced frequently.

Works Cited

Escoffier, Jeffrey. "The Second Sexual Revolution." Sexual Revolution. New York: Thunder Mouth, 2003. N. pag. Print.
"Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate." Vanity Fair. Vanity, Mar. 2008. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Kingston, Victoria. Simon & Garfunkel: The Biography. New York: Fromm International, 1998. Print.
"Mike Nichols on The Graduate." Time Out. N.p., 12 Apr. 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
Whitehead, J. W. Appraising The Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2011. Print.

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