To Kill or Not to Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill or Not To Kill a Mockingbird

"It's a sin to kill a mockingbird," explains Atticus Finch to his children (To Kill Dir. Robert Mulligan). Neither the novel nor film version of To Kill A Mockingbird is better than one another, just different. “It's no secret that adapting a novel to film can be a perilous affair. A movie, even when it's good, doesn't often convey the feeling of the book it's based on. But in this case screenwriter Horton Foote treated the Harper Lee novel - about a Depression-era Alabama lawyer and his two children - with love and respect, and the director successfully evoked the novel's sense of childhood mystery and tenderness.” (Dashiell) The same characters were the same heroes and the same characters were killed so the movie still resembles the book yet the directors choose to change some ideas around causing a different perspective while still maintaining the same morals. Some minor differences between the movie and the book include the book being much more descriptive and easier to understand where as the movie is harder to understand due to the fact that there isn’t any narration. The book also has more suspense while the movie moves too fast and cuts out scenes. The movie moving too fast causes it to be very predictable. Three major differences that stood out include missing characters and characters perceived differently, essential scenes left out and the way the book shows individual people while the movie shows the relationships in action. The book versus the movie shows clear differences but the morals are all still the same.

To begin, from the book to the movie there were some characters missing. Some being important and some that have to relevance at all. One character that was missing from the movie that played an important role was Aunt Alexandra. First of all by having Aunt Alexandra in the film the reader doesn’t see the feminine side to Scout instead only Scout’s tomboy side is portrayed. Also, not having Aunt Alexandra around means there is no one to challenge Atticus’s authority. Without Aunt Alexandra, Miss Stephanie is also left out. Seeing how Jem and Scout act around another family member is impossible when the directors’ cut Aunt Alexandra out of the movie. Showing how the children act around another family member could show different sides of their personalities. A good explanation for leaving Aunt Alexandra out could be that the movie would have just been too long with too many extra parts that may have not been necessary. Rachael Haverford, the Finches’ next door neighbor, was another character deleted from the book, Dill was not living with .The movie and the book have differences in the overall way the characters appear. For instance, Jem isn’t nearly as physically fit in the movie as he is described in the book. Also in the book Scout is the main character and in the movie Scout doesn’t really know what’s going on. All of the scenes in the movie that present Scout as anything more than the narrator were cut out. In the book, Scout is more of a girl caught in the middle of Atticus and Alexandria. She acts a lot like Alexandria although she doesn’t know it. For instance when Scout says, “He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham,”(Lee 31) shows how Scout seeing the differences in people around her town. During the book, she changes more into Atticus. Atticus says to Scout,” If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it,” (Cooper) this shows Atticus trying to teach Scout a lesson in life. Scout later says,” Well, it’d be sorry of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”(Lee 279) This shows that Scout now understands that all people the same and deserve to be treated with respect. As described in the book, Scout seems to be more mature and possibly even bigger but in the movie she is portrayed as a little childish girl. Two major differences that stood out between the movie and the book were the absence of characters and the different ways the characters were represented.

The book gives you’re a broader view of everything while the movie only points out everything that is important thus causing whole scenes to be left out. A very important scene missing from the movie is when Jem and Scout go to church with Calpurnia. In the book, while at the church, the audience learns about how highly respected the Finches are by the African Americans due to the fact that Atticus Finch is defending a black man in court. Also at church, Calpurnia gets