How Is The Message From The Movie Different From The Book?
Uploaded by Artinger on Jun 11, 2004
When Harper Lee published To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960, she did not yet know that it was going to be made into a movie. The movie, filmed under the same title around that time, differs from the book at some points. The main themes of the book and the movie are different. While the novel mainly deals with racism, patriotism, and the mob attitude of society, the movie partially ignores these, if not totally. The movie concentrates more on the scenes dealing with Tom Robinson’s case.
The issue of racism is handled differently in the movie than the book. The book concentrates on racism in the South during the Great Depression. One of the ways Harper Lee does this is by introducing Dolphus Raymond. Dolphus Raymond, a white man, is married to a black woman and has children with her. Neither the white nor the black societies accept them because they are not part of either society, they believe. This shows that a community back then in the South was often divided into two parts, divided by race. The invisible division is also shown when the county starts to gossip about Atticus, calling him a “nigger lover”. In addition, Harper Lee shows racism by presenting the blacks as inferiors. When Jem and Scout go to the Black Church with Calpurnia in the book, they are quite surprised by the blacks’ illiteracy and their poorness. The fact that blacks do the dirty, manual work in the novel is another proof of their inferiority. Zeebo, a black character, is the county’s trash man.
In the movie, however, this segregation in society and jobs is not as well portrayed, mainly because these important parts are omitted. Simple things in the novel are blamed on the blacks, but the movie leaves this out. It was the black presence that made Mr. Radley take Boo out of the jail. An additional proof of racism in the book is Atticus’ remark, namely when he says that Tom Robinson’s case is a lost case from the beginning simply because he is black sued by a white man. The court scene of the movie does not give off the same impression and racism does not become a main theme in the movie. The only character that seems to be racist in the movie is Bob Ewell, who gets insulted by the fact that Atticus believes a black...