Precious Book Vs Movie Analysis

Many famous novels are adapted into films using a multitude of different strategies to make it interesting for all audiences. Push, the debut novel by Sapphire written in 1996, is told from the point of view of an illiterate 16-year-old obese black girl named Claireece “Precious” Jones who lives in Harlem. Precious, her preferred name, is raped by her parents at a very young age and had an incest child with down syndrome at the age of twelve and another child at the age of sixteen. After thirteen years, a movie adaptation based on this novel was released. Contrary to the book, the movie is named Precious and is directed by Lee Daniels. The novel and the film are completely different for many reasons. Keeping in mind that the movie Precious

is based on the novel with a different title, it is very simplified in order to attract all audiences instead of appealing to a solely adult audience because of the disturbing scenes from the novel. This can be observed by comparing the plot constructed by Lee Daniels. It can also be seen when comparing the main character and the theme or tone of the movie which are also very different.
The plot from the movie Precious is very different from the one in the novel Push because where the novel is dark and disturbing, the movie leaves out these absurd scenes and instead, focuses on the hope for Precious to have a better life. In both works, she is still an illiterate and obese black woman living with her mom in Harlem as it has already been mentioned. However, the plot, in the novel and in the film, is centered around different aspects of her life. In the novel, it is said that Precious is sexually assaulted by both her father and her mother at different times in her life. She has a flashback to a particular time when both her mother and her father were both sexually molesting a younger version of herself.

The younger vesion of herself describes what is happening in a disturbing way when she says, “That smell, he put his ball in my face, years like wash machine aroun and around, mama jaw open like evil wolf, the smell deeper than toilet, her fingers pick apart my pussy.” (Sapphire, 72) Clearly, while reading this, it is difficult not to imagine how sick both her parents must be to do these kinds of things to their little girl. The novel focuses on Claireece’s life as a rape victim whereas the movie focuses more on the hope that she will be rescued from her situation. The hope that she dreams of is to become independent if she does well in school and also the hope that she will finally be able to live life without her abusive mother. In the movie, Precious doesn’t have long flashbacks about her father raping her. She instead talks to a welfare worker about what happens in her everyday life and explains that her mother likes to use the system to her advantage and takes all the money meant for her own children. While Claireece is talking

to her social worker, she starts talking about her mother and why she doesn’t like the way she acts when she says, “She’s like a whale on the couch. She say I eat all the time, but she always making me eat. Then she call me a fat mess. She say the apartment is little cause of me. Only time she ever leaves is to play her numbers. I feel like I could just sit in the house with her every day, the shades drawn, watch TV, eat, watch TV, eat again. Can you help out with that?” (Precious) Claireece talks about her mother in the movie like she hates her and talks about living a better life without her but in the novel, Claireece just wants her mother to get better because she still wants a family. When Claireece asks if the welfare worker can help her, it shows that Claireece really does want to get help and try to have a life without her mom. The director made Claireece stronger and he also simplified Claireece’s thoughts to give hope to the audience that things will get better for Claireece in the long run. Even with some similarities, these overwhelming plot differences make it easy to see why the director simplified the script.
Not only does the plot differ in novel and in film, there is also a very big difference in Claireece’s personality.

In the novel, Claireece is a teenager who has no idea how absolutely wrong her parents are and that there are ways she can get help. However, all she wishes for is for her mother to start being a better parent and for herself to forget about everything that happened in her life. In the movie, Claireece is portrayed as a violent teen who wants revenge for what her parents have done to her. At one point in the novel, Claireece is telling a story about how, when her father raped her, she liked it and never asked him to stop because it felt good. She didn’t know that it was wrong at the time and was an innocent little girl. This is proven when Claireece says, “Daddy sick me, disgust me, but still he sex me up. I nawshus in my stomach but hot tight in my twat and I think I want it back, the smell of the bedroom, the hurt - he slap my face till it sting and my ears sing separate songs from each other, call me names, pump my pussy in out in out in out awww I come.” (Sapphire, 60) She clearly doesn’t know that it is completely unacceptable for a father to rape his child but she also doesn’t do anything to stop it from happening. Claireece has so many mixed emotions that makes it difficult to understand exactly what is happening. In the novel, Claireece is also not a violent person and doesn’t want to cause any trouble to her mom or her dad in any way. In the movie,

however, Claireece is violent and she also sees that getting raped by her father is very wrong and wants revenge for what he did to her. Precious has one major goal; she wants to get away from her mother. While sobbing to Ms. Rain after she was diagnosed with HIV, Claireece talks about her father dying and how she feels about her life. This sixteen-year-old, who has been through hell and back says, while crying, “Nobody love me […] Love ain’t done nothing for me. Love beat me, raped me, called me an animal, make me feel worthless. Make me sick.” (Precious) Claireece can be more easily related by the audience in the movie. The movie makes Claireece a person who fights back against the people that make her upset. In one scene, Claireece has a fight with her mother and gets thrown down the stairs with her baby. This, to whoever read the novel, might be seen as a way to appeal to the male audience with the presence of scenes involving action. After this scene, Claireece leaves her mother’s house and never looks back. Claireece is very different in the movie compared to the novel because, in the novel, Claireece is illiterate and, because the novel is written in her point of view, this makes it very difficult to understand what she is trying to express through her words. Whereas, in the movie, Claireece can be easily related to and has many emotions that are hard to distinguish in the novel.
Furthermore, the tone in the novel and the film are completely different. Where the novel is written in Precious’s point of view and lets the readers know all of her emotions because she is the one that tells her own story. Sapphire doesn’t leave out any rape details because she really wants the readers to feel uncomfortable. This gives a dark and disturbing atmosphere that is completely opposite to what Lee Daniels did to the movie. This is shown when Sapphire writes about Claireece being raped and her emotions linked to being raped. In the novel, Precious says, “I'm your daughter, fucking me illegal. But I keep my mouf shut so's the fucking don't turn into a beating. I start to feel good; stop being a video dancer and start coming. I try to go back to video but coming now, rocking under Carl now, my twat jumping juicy, it feel good.” (Sapphire, 16) Even though she knows that it is illegal and wrong for her dad to be raping her as she says, she also talks about herself “coming” and her feeling good. The words that Precious says in this quote and in other parts of the novel are what make it dark and disturbing. However, there are nowhere near as many disturbing scenes in the movie. There are happier emotions felt while watching the movie because the director made it seem like Claireece was fighting for her own life even though the emotions felt are not as mixed as those in the novel. This is proven by what Mark Blankenship from the Huffington Post writes about in his news article called “The Movie ‘Precious’ tells two stories at once”. He says that, “while Precious is getting raped […] she imagines herself at a movie premiere. When her mother is viciously forcing her to overeat, Precious imagines she’s in a Sofia Loren movie, where her mother treats her like she’s a countess.” (Blankenship) This proves that the director simplified the story by eliminating the horrible scenes of Precious being raped by her father and instead, diverted the audience’s attention from the rape to the way that Precious copes with these flashbacks. Instead of having to watch the rape happening, Lee Daniels decided to make the adaptation less dark and disturbing and focus more on the important parts where Precious is mostly happy. She is in this state mostly at school where the majority of the movie is filmed to show Precious getting better and better at reading and writing. The director simplified the main themes to not disturb the audience while they are watching the movie but he also gets rid the most important scenes where Precious starts believing that she can live a better life and all of the different emotions associated with her life.
Ultimately, the novel Push written by Sapphire and the movie Precious directed by Lee Daniels are very different. While they both tell the same story about Claireece and her life lived with her mom, the way the director simplified the plot made it less disturbing for the audience watching the movie. While the plot is different, there are also many differences in both the main character, Precious, and the main theme or tone portrayed in these works. Push and Precious are renowned works that show people that whatever happens in life, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel that can lead to a better life.