The Giver Book Vs Movie

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Lois Lowry’s book “The Giver” is about a community that has no flaws and everything is very controlled. They have no good or bad memories they just live their lives doing the jobs they were assigned. One day, Jonas, the new receiver, had an idea to release the memories back into the community. The story was later turned into a film and had some similarities, but the director of the movie departed from Lowry’s original story in a number of ways. By examining the different tones and the changes in a few of the characters, it's clear that the film departs from the story.

For example, on page 194 after The Giver described how tough it would be to leave the community, Jonas states “‘Yes,’ he told The Giver. ‘I’ll do it. I think I can do it. I’ll …show more content…

The director decided to show the Chief Elder as more of an antagonist instead of the sweeter side of her. For example, in the movie she had big plans to find out what Jonas was up to and wanted to stop everything he was trying to do. During these scenes they used a lot of non-diegetic sound to build up the suspense of what she would try to do next. In other words, by using the suspenseful music it brought out her villain characteristics. At this point in the movie, the viewer felt as if they were rooting against the Chief Elder and cheering for Jonas. From this we can infer that the Chief Elder was going to try and shut down Jonas and ruin everything. Another thing I noticed was when Asher and Chief Elder were trying to locate Jonas’s location, they used some low angles and low-key lighting on her. In other words, the director choose to use the low-key lighting to make the viewer feel scared about what might happen to Jonas. And when the director used the low angle, this represented the power that she had over the situation. This evidence highlights that the Chief Elder holds a lot of power and plays a big role in the movie. To sum this up, the film and novel show different characterization and the chief elder has different features in the movie to add more

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