Stand By Me Comparison

Stephen King’s The Body is a coming-of-age story about four boys setting out to find a dead body in the 1950’s. The film adaptation is a movie called Stand by Me, directed by Rob Reiner. A central theme in the book is that when emotional support from parents is absent, your friends can provide the support you need. The movie version of the story did a mediocre job of showing how meaningful these friendships were to these kids when they were twelve. The three most prominent examples of this theme are when Teddy broke down after being verbally attacked by Milo, when Chris and Gordie had a fairly deep conversation about the future, and when Chris and Gordie support each other in high school. An example from The Body that shows how friends support each other can be found on page 351, when Chris and Vern give a bit of a pep talk to Teddy. The boys had just been caught trespassing in the dump, and Milo Pressman insults Teddy’s father. Teddy eventually breaks down after

This passage describes what happens to Chris and Gordie when they are a bit older and no longer friends with Teddy and Vern. Chris ends up enrolling in the college courses with Gordie and they support each other through high school. The following quote from Gordie shows how much they needed each other. “We were clinging to each other in deep water.” This quote connects to the conversation Chris and Gordie had about how friends can drag you down. It is not openly said, but it can be implied that they were clinging to each other because they were all each other had. The film covers Vern and Teddy’s lives after finding the body, but doesn’t mention anything about Chris and Gordie supporting each other through high school. I feel that taking this scene out of the movie subtracts from the main theme of the story, but doesn’t make their friendship at age twelve any