In Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, compare the moral implication that McCarthy gives versus the Coens’ implied moral judgment of Carson Wells played by Woody Harrelson. In the literary text McCarthy’s lack the use of standard literary punctuation in quoting which character is speaking almost as if he interjects cinematic fiction for the purpose disorienting the audience. McCarthy characterizes Wells, a hit man, as a philosophical, militant, and mercenary who never touches a weapon for self-defense or offense. The Coen brothers’ make due with such limitation when directing Harrelson to humanize Wells’ psychotic personality when face to face with Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem. The Coen brothers overly complicate …show more content…
However, the Coen brothers do a wonderful job on twisting literary aspects of the novel in order to reduce film time. The exclusion of time and space; between the conversation with Wells/Moss and Wells/Chigurh, are some of the missing key paradigmatic concepts of intertextual monolog and dialogues.
McCarthy introduces Carson Wells, in chapter five; in a Houston, Texas office building to accept a business man’s proposed hit on Anton Chigurh. McCarthy describes Wells by saying, “Wells shut the door and stood with his hands crossed before him at the wrist. The way a funeral director might stand.” (McCarthy, 137). This allusion of funeral director instantly labels Wells as patient receiver of death, motionless like a corpse awaiting preparation. Coens’ use of time allows Harrelson to eliminate this masculine
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But this demeanor misrepresents humanistic humor all together in the Coen brothers’ film by omitting the scene. Wells (Harrelson) is seen walking up a flight of stairs and Chigurh (Bardem) approaches him before reaching the top. In the novel, Wells walks in the room and begins looking around as if being observant, yet in the film he lacks the militant behavior of knowing your enemy. From me being in the Marines, the defining purpose of military discipline or more overly, is characterized by confidence attitudes with the minimalist response; like a clean break between movement and thought. Vincent Allan King helps proves that combining cosmic morality and genre fiction complicate the moral comprehensive views of killing by saying, “The tendency to conflate certain genres with aesthetic and moral complacency is, ironically, a function of our own aesthetic and moral complacency.” (King, 540). Wells is classified as a hit man, but his micro existence in the novel and film seems pointless to the cause. In other words, Wells is a stranded tourist waiting for his one-way ticket to Armageddon. McCarthy incorporates a thematic mixture of militant notions that does not accurately characterize Anton Chigurh, Carson Wells,
Analogies and metaphors are used to compare things in order to help simplify a claim or make it more memorable. McCarthy uses a metaphor when stating, “Ours could have been the honor of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining, living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself” (para 7). He discusses what the United States could have been at war’s end if this country was not “losing on every front.” In this metaphor he compares the U.S. to a beacon pointing out the horrifying results of Communism as it sits around the World that is Crumbling from World War II. By comparing the country to a beacon in “a desert of destruction,” McCarthy compares the United States to humanity’s last hope at civilization. By using
In an excerpt from “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote writes as an outside male voice irrelevant to the story, but has either visited or lived in the town of Holcomb. In this excerpt Capote utilized rhetoric to no only describe the town but also to characterize it in order to set a complete scene for the rest of the novel. Capote does this by adapting and forming diction, imagery, personification, similes, anaphora, metaphors, asyndeton, and alliteration to fully develop Holcomb not only as a town, but as a town that enjoys its isolation.
Chatman, Seymour, "Existents." Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. 107-126, 131-145.
In both stories of “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by O’Connor, similarities and contrasts exist in their literacy forms. The characters in both stories are also comparable, although diverse at certain points. Several of the similarities ranges from foreshadowing, character simulation, and even the setting is similar since it envies ' and harbor criminal incidences (O’Connor, 121). Characters have similar qualities that originate them advance their heinous acts. It’s evident when the two stories culminates with the unwarranted deaths of innocent individuals i.e. grandmother in cold blood and the Clutters by O’Connor’s story.
The film Capote, based on the how the writer of “In Cold Blood” did his research to write his book, a masterpiece of literature, has portrayed Capote’s behavior during his research vividly. Capote’s behavior during the years Perry waits on death row in order to get personal testimony of the night of killings is a controversial topic. Some argue that what Capote did was absolutely necessary for an ambitious writer to create such a master piece while other argue that human ethics is more important than the creation of an ideal “non-fiction noble” and the paths he took to get there are morally ambiguous. Even though he gave the world a milestone in literature, his behaviors seem unethical because he lied, pretended to be a friend of an accused murderer who was in a death row, and did not have any empathy to him.
The stylistic choices an author makes when writing has a huge impact on the mood and atmosphere of the piece created. Take, for example, Cormac Mcarthy’s The Road, and Gregory Robert’s Shantaram. The two incredible novels are in many ways similar, however also very different due to a different writing styles.
“Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. (Christopher Alexander Supertramp”Mccandless; 1992)
Some readers may judge by word-count that Cole doesn't say very much in this novel, but such is not the case. Cormac McCarthy's protagonist, John Grady Cole, tells us a great deal about himself through his dialogue. The author of this book, like many contemporary writers, expects a lot of his readers, and rewards close examinations of his work with deep insights about his characters. The near-poetic density of the language of John Grady Cole helps the author to speak volumes without having to beat the reader over the head with obvious conclusions.
McCarthy wrote the novel in ways that force readers to remove themselves from their comfort zones. He wrote The Road with a lack of punctuation that can make things somewhat confusing for readers. Some critics find that without quotation marks it makes the book hard to follow. But when I read the book I found that after the first fifty pages I understood when the characters were speaking. Finding that I had to pay a little more attention didn’t bother ...
When was the last time you felt certain of your impending future? For cancer survivor, Hazel, the answer is never. In The Fault in Our Stars, sixteen year old Hazel lives with cancer and attends a support group where she meets Augustus, another young cancer survivor who changes her outlook on the world forever. He takes Hazel on an adventure of love, friendship, and pain, and together they yearn to have authority over their uncontrollable fates. Isaac, a blind teenager, and Hazel’s mom also play significant roles in her life. Similarly, in Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie strengthen their friendship through love and suffering, and they learn that humans have some control over their end destination. At the ranch they work at, Lennie and George have to choose how they want their lives to turn out, which directly impacts the choices they will make regarding the future. While John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men both establish motifs of friendship, games, and hands, they convey different universal ideas about humanity. In particular, Green suggests that humans cannot always manipulate every situation, while Steinbeck focuses on the ideas that men often have a choice in their destinies.
Meneghetti, Michael. “Review: Ellis Cashmore (2009) Martin Scorsese’s America.” Film Philosophy 14.2 (2010). 161-168. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
The classic novel, Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck was made into a Hollywood Blockbuster in 1992. Directed and acted by Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, Hollywood took a stab at trying to recreate this literary success. The novel, which takes place in the 1930’s, follows the lives of two men, George and Lennie, as they try to attain their dream of owning a farm. George is a smart man who always seems to have things figured out. Lennie is massive, but has the mind of a young child. George looks after him, but it is not easy since Lennie always seems to get himself in some kind of trouble. As they struggle towards their dreams, George and Lennie face obstacles that test their friendship. In the end, with Lennie dead, George finds out that dreams aren’t worth striving for, and eventually, loneliness overcomes everything. The movie, running almost two hours, stays very true to the book, although some things are removed or added. While the movie differs from the book in a few ways, it still gives its audience the same message.
The narration is broken up into paragraphs of various lengths, all of which contain long and detailed sentences. E...
While hundreds, even thousands of excellent movies have been made over the years since motion pictures were invented, there are some movies that stand out among the best. There are various reasons for these standouts, sometimes incredible acting, sometimes impeccable story lines, but in many cases, it is the issues addressed by the movie. Most of the greatest movies contain commentaries or analyses of certain issues, be they moral, social, or otherwise. John McTiernan directed one of these films, The Hunt for Red October, based on the similarly titled best-selling novel by Tom Clancy. The Hunt for Red October, a product of the anti-communist attitudes of the 1980’s, is above all a commentary on morality. It follows a critical moral decision made by one man, Soviet Captain Marko Ramius, portrayed by Sean Connery, and follows the consequences of that moral decision to their conclusion. While this is not the only instance of morality being questioned in this movie, it is the most important, as it is the decision upon which the story is based. Other characters, like Alec Baldwin’s character of Jack Ryan, and Scott Glenn’s character Captain Bart Mancuso also have to make moral decisions that will have important effects on Ramius’ decision.