A Separate Peace Movie And Book Comparison

The film and writing industry go hand in hand, as they often inspire one another. As a result, the translation of many novels into movie format and vice versa vary in success. For instance, many people prefer the film format over the novel since it is usually less time consuming and requires less active participation. However, films tend to overlook significant details which assist the viewer's understanding of the story. Therefore, the two separate forms of media have too many differences to portray the same work of fiction accurately, as they both have their pros and cons that appeal to different types of stories and plots. Numerous changes in the movie adaptation of the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, affected the viewer’s interpretation

In the novel, A Separate Peace readers obtained a clear idea of who was telling the story. Gene functions as the interpreter of the story—as he offers a narrative that connects the reader with the novel. The utilization of Gene as a narrator in the novel attracts the reader and generates sympathy, which makes the story more meaningful. Additionally, the first person perspective allows readers to understand how the character thinks and experiences the world around them. However, in the film, the director decided not to utilize this method. In fact, rather than utilizing a narrator, the director made a hindrance between the viewer and the story, which served a different purpose. For example, the exclusion from the movie of Gene's intense emotional battle before he “jounced the limb” causing Phineas to fall; made him seem more simple-minded than he seemed in the book. Rather than pulling the audience in to encounter the story directly, the director chose to create some separation, which permitted the viewers to keep a receptive outlook of all the characters and events. Instead of being biased to one character, as in the novel, the viewers may decide whose perspective to sympathize with. Furthermore, this difference sets the movie and the novel apart in such a way where viewers experience a vast amount of different point of views which may lead to the preference for the movie

Therefore, one significant difference between the movie and book is the exclusion of the marble staircase. In the novel, before the flashback, while Gene is revisiting Devon he remarks that he wants to visit two places, the tree, and the marble stairs. When reaching the marble staircase Gene begins to contemplate on how solid the marble staircase was: “I reached a marble foyer, and stopped at the foot of a long white marble flight of stairs….The marble must be unusually hard. That seemed very likely, only too likely, although with all my thought about these stairs this exceptional hardness had not occurred to me. It was surprising that I had overlooked that, that crucial fact." (Knowles, 3). This sentence emphasizes the hardness of the marble more than necessary. This may be the reason why Gene only visits the tree, possibly due to the staircase giving away the ending too soon in the movie. For instance, seeing a tree doesn’t necessarily hint at the further content, while seeing a staircase may result in an individual making the connection of falling down which, would ultimately give away the story’s climax and ending. Also, the narrator continued mentioning it is a crucial fact; therefore, readers may infer there would be something important to do with it. This is a significant scene as it gets the reader interested through foreshadowing early