To Kill a Mockingbird: Book vs. Movie

“To Kill a Mockingbird”, by Harper Lee is a very good book which is centered mainly around the childhood of the main character, Scout. As the story goes along, the book slowly reveals the real society and environment Scout lived in. The development of multiple characters came from the trial of a black man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a white woman. Scout’s father, Atticus acting as the defense attorney in this case, because of that Scout and her brother Jem are faced with many problems throughout the book. However, when this book was made into a movie, it lost many important characters and key plots. It is like two different media forms tell two different stories, as one is mainly focusing on the childhood environment of Scout and Jem, while the other focuses more on the trial of Tom Robinson. For me to show this point, some of these important characters and event will be compared between the movie and the book.

There are many characters in the movie that were left out. The three important characters that were left out are Lula, Jack and Aunt Alexandra. First of all, Lula was the women at Calpurnia’s church and when Calpurnia took Jem & Scout to her church, calpurnia and lula got into an argument, and it was the only example in the story of black on white racism meaning she believes that if white people can be racist, black people can be too. Secondly, Jack was used to argue about the common rumor that have been spread about some negative opinions about Atticus, he is in the book to show that not all southern people act the same way; to prove this point; He is always being patient with Scout; he also understands what problem Atticus is facing, situations he’s in and therefore supports them through different means as he could.

Lastly, the most important character the director of the movie left out should be Aunt Alexandra. Without her, you don’t get to know alot of details about other characters, such as Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie. Although both seems to be represented by one character in the movie, the funny characteristics have been lost, since then it no longer gets our attention. In the movie, Scout  is presented like in a Tomboy side, and not much of her girlish side, but after reading the book the way I think of Scout have actually changed alot, before I thought that Scout and Jem only had those nice and sweet personalities, but in the stages of reading the book I realize that they are just like normal children, like us.

I guess that the reason the director left out such important characters will be to limit the length of the movie, as this movie took around 6 class periods, this move would be necessary and perhaps give us some new events to reveal who first watched it. In addition to the characters that were left out, there were also several key events that were left out or I guess, changed in the movie. I will summarize the important events that are left out in the movie that I’ve noticed. Giving a reason for watching the movie version before reading the book is that, after watching the book might be easier to read and understand while still having suspense on what is left out or changed through the transmission.

In the book, Scout finds the knothole on the oak tree in Boo Radley’s front yard, but this time Scout kept it as a secret to herself, but afterward she told Jem about it because she can’t hide it; what is also left out, is Miss Maudie’s house catching on fire. This event is a big part of the book because it took like a whole chapter showing it, Miss Maudie is actually happy about her house burning down, because it would leave more space for her garden, I think she either have abnormal thoughts or she is just calming herself down, thinking about the few advantages of her house being vanished. Also missing, is when Jem got in trouble and had to read stories to Mrs. Dubose, but it was actually helping her getting rid of morphine addiction. The events all left out helped me to understand what daily life was like, and they also have at least some connections to the trial of Tom Robinson.

Overall I should say that the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” is much better than its movie version, the book is much more descriptive and actually easier to understand, as some parts in the movie were not acted out very well or left out for other purpose.

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