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Blog #5 – Film Adaptation

Time.

When books are converted into film the biggest challenge is time. The average length of a movie is about 2 hours; most books that are adapted into movies are at least 300 pages. It is very hard to condense a 300+ page book into two hours and a lot of details that are significant to readers get cut. Take Harry Potter for example, several characters’ well developed back story gets eliminated in the films. Certain character get eliminated altogether (Peeves, Charlie Weasley, Teddy Lupin, Professor Binns, Collin Creevy after CoS and Dennis Creevy, Dobby between CoS and DH, Kreacher, Winky, The Gaunts, etc.). We also lost out on many scenes like the ones that occur in OotP at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, where we learn about what happened to Neville’s parents; or parts of scenes like in PS/SS with the centaurs, other than Firenze (Bane, Magorian, etc.), where we first see that the centaurs believe that they are better than humans. As well the characters do not end up being nearly as complex in the films as they are in the book. In the Harry Potter films Ron and Neville seem to only serve the purpose of being comic relief whereas in the books they are much more complex. We also lose a lot of Harry’s personality between the pages and the screen. In the books, Harry has a tendency to be sarcastic and that is lost in the first few films and we just barely see some of that aspect of his personality emerge in the films for OotP, HBP and DH. The reason that most film adaptations do not live up to their literary counterparts is because of the loss of complexity that the lack of time forces on the telling of the story.

PS/SS- Philosopher’s Stone/ Sorcerer’s Stone(book 1)
CoS- Chamber of Secrets(book 2)
PoA- Prisoner of Azkaban(book 3)
GoF- Goblet of Fire(book 4)
OotP- Order of the Pheonix(book 5)
HBP- Half-Blood Prince(book 6)
DH- Deathly Hallows(book 7)

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Blog #5 – Film Adaptation

Time.

When books are converted into film the biggest challenge is time. The average length of a movie is about 2 hours; most books that are adapted into movies are at least 300 pages. It is very hard to condense a 300+ page book into two hours and a lot of details that are significant to readers get cut. Take Harry Potter for example, several characters’ well developed back story gets eliminated in the films. Certain character get eliminated altogether (Peeves, Charlie Weasley, Teddy Lupin, Professor Binns, Collin Creevy after CoS and Dennis Creevy, Dobby between CoS and DH, Kreacher, Winky, The Gaunts, etc.). We also lost out on many scenes like the ones that occur in OotP at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, where we learn about what happened to Neville’s parents; or parts of scenes like in PS/SS with the centaurs, other than Firenze (Bane, Magorian, etc.), where we first see that the centaurs believe that they are better than humans. As well the characters do not end up being nearly as complex in the films as they are in the book. In the Harry Potter films Ron and Neville seem to only serve the purpose of being comic relief whereas in the books they are much more complex. We also lose a lot of Harry’s personality between the pages and the screen. In the books, Harry has a tendency to be sarcastic and that is lost in the first few films and we just barely see some of that aspect of his personality emerge in the films for OotP, HBP and DH. The reason that most film adaptations do not live up to their literary counterparts is because of the loss of complexity that the lack of time forces on the telling of the story.

PS/SS- Philosopher’s Stone/ Sorcerer’s Stone(book 1)
CoS- Chamber of Secrets(book 2)
PoA- Prisoner of Azkaban(book 3)
GoF- Goblet of Fire(book 4)
OotP- Order of the Pheonix(book 5)
HBP- Half-Blood Prince(book 6)
DH- Deathly Hallows(book 7)

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Blog #4 – Allegory and Symbolism

Allegory is a literary device that uses characters or events to represent ideas and concepts in easy to understand forms for a reader. Whereas symbolism is the representation of things/feeling in objects or actions other than the obvious. An example of an allegory is Phoenix’s overall story in “A Worn Path” which represents the ideas of life and death. An example of symbolism in “A Worn Path” is the struggle that phoenix has going up the hill and the idea of the struggle that the African-American population faced after the abolition of slavery. The significance of wilderness in the story “Death by Landscape” is seen with the forest near where Lucy disappeared. Forests tend to represent mystery and danger in many literary works. In Harry Potter the Forbidden Forest is where many dangerous creatures live, it is where Ron and Harry go to find out about Hagrid’s role in the Chamber of Secrets and it is where Harry first encounters Voldemort after he goes to Hogwarts. It is very fitting that Lucy’s disappearance happens near a forest when you compare the symbol of forests to other literary works.

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Blog #3 – Blindness vs. Awareness

In the story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway there is an overall theme of blindness versus awareness. We see this very heavily in the relationship between Krebs and his mother. Krebs returns home from war and is suffering from some sort of Post-traumatic stress disorder. When he returns home he is very aware of the world around him and how much his view of it has changed from before he went to war. He becomes alienated in his hometown because of this new found awareness and he finds it hard to connect with others. His mother, in comparison, is relatively blind; not only to the realities and horrors of war that her son has faced but his poor mental state upon his return home. Krebs’ mother wants him to and encourages him to go out and participate in normal social activities and she wants him to get a job. Krebs is indifferent to what she wants for him because he knows that these things are not a reality for him. Krebs tells his mother that he doesn’t love anybody as if he believes that there is no point in loving anyone because they will never understand things the way he does with his newfound awareness of the world.

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Blog #2 – Marxist/Feminist Critiques

For Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” I believe that a Marxist approach is the more valid approach to critiquing the story. The story follows a mother’s reminiscence of her oldest daughter, Emily. She thinks of the life that Emily has had and how she regrets not being there for her. She had to work while Emily was growing up, because her father left. Emily was sent to stay with relative when her mother couldn’t afford to look after her. She never developed the attachments that most children do, and as a result she has drifted in her teenage years. Her mother believes that she has failed Emily. A Marxist critiquing approach makes sense because Emily’s mother would not feel that she had failed her daughter if she had not been a part of the lower/working class and had been able to be home with Emily instead of working. As well, Emily would not have faced all of the problems and difficulties that she had to deal with in her life had she had the support of her mother and had built attachments to others; but she couldn’t because her mother had to work instead of be around for her daughter.

For Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” I believe that a Feminist approach is the more valid approach to critiquing the story. The woman in the story suffers from post-partum depression and her husband keeps her in a room in the house in order for her to “recover”. As the story progresses we see more and more of the woman’s mental processes. We see that she is trapped, not only mentally by her depression but physical by her husband as well. We see this manifest in her fixation with the woman that she believes is trapped inside of the wall paper. We see this develop until the end of the story where she takes on the persona, entirely, of the woman she sees in the wallpaper. A Feminist approach makes sense because the story is an example of the oppression of women, the ignorance of the problems that women face and the control that men have over women in a marital relationship.

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Blog #1 – Story of an Hour

In Kate Chopin’s ‘Story of an hour’ we see the character of Mrs. Mallard, a housewife in an unhappy marriage. She has just been told of her husband’s death and apparently suffers from a heart condition. In the beginning of the story the news of her husband’s death is a devastating blow. However, as the story progresses we see Mrs. Mallard become very relieved, even happy, that her husband is gone. At the end of the story her husband shows up, apparently not having been at the site of the accident that Mrs. Mallard was told he had died in. Mrs. Mallard promptly dies of a heart attack and the doctors said that it was because she was overjoyed at her husband’s return.

While Chopin’s story does display her ability to deliver a “trick” conclusion to her story the story also displays her ability to write as a regional writer. She shows the readers the mindset of the housewife in a loveless marriage that is bound by her marriage contract. She shows that Mrs. Mallard would never have left her husband but that she was “free” once he was ‘dead’. While the story shows both her abilities in trick endings and regional writing, I believe it her ability with trick endings that is more important to the story. The ending of this story is what makes it most interesting to its readers. If Chopin had not been able to write the trick endings like she can, the story would never have had the same effect on the reader and had Mrs. Mallard not died, it would have entirely changed the tone of the story.