To Kill A Mockingbird Compare And Contrast Essay

Within the first minute of the movie, I realized there were going to be many considerable differences. Having watched other book to movie adaptations before, I was mindful that not everything can be included in an only two hour film, but I was not expecting so many things to be removed or altered. Honestly, the movie felt very focused on the court case, thus eliminating other equally important scenes. The book, on the other hand, made the court case a major event but not the main focus, choosing to also emphasize settings like First Purchase Church, the conversation Scout and Dill have with Mr. Raymond, and the characters of Aunt Alexandra and Mrs. Dubose. All of which were not included in the movie. The first words written in the book are “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow,” which is a great introduction, considering Scout then goes on to describe the events that caused his arm to break. Instead of starting with the same great introduction, the movie resorts to using the dull description of Maycomb County derived from page 6 of the book: “Maycomb was a tired, old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it…” Whereas
Resembling most movies based on a book, To Kill a Mockingbird was ten times better as a book because of all the background details it includes. The movie does “bring characters to life” especially with facial expressions and dialogue, which it did extremely well in the courthouse with Tom’s sweating and Mayella’s screaming at Atticus. But at what price? Movies have to condense everything including character introductions, causing audiences to not personally connect with a character. For example, with the movie Atticus the audience isn’t aware of his past struggles, how the loss of his wife, or his first case as a lawyer impacted him. The book can go into as much detail as it wants because it can be any