The Dogs Book Vs Movie

Literary works have been adapted into feature films since the beginning of the industry. By giving the written work sound and movement, film adaptation lets the story to be told in a more engaging way. It gives the audience’s senses a more powerful experience. However, the film usually differs from the original story due to the director’s ideas, actors, and many other factors. Ronald Wright’s decisions made in his adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s short story The Dogs, illustrates the positives and negatives on film adaptation. We are able to see the good and bad sides on both the original literary work and the film adaptation.

After reading Kureishi’s short story The Dogs, I am left frightened with the image of this nightmare stuck in my head.

As the horrifying mood scares me while I read through, the violent actions of the dogs frightens me even more. In my understanding, dogs are normally cute, loyal and obedient animals. However, Kureishi overthrows my understanding in his depiction of the dogs in the story. Kureishi depicts the dogs as dangerous and furious monsters attacking the boy, “The dog had already knocked down her son and began not so much to bite him as to eat him, furiously.” This monstrous depiction does not fit with my image of dogs, which horrifies me. This also makes me wonder if this is reality, or just a nightmare. While questioning the dangerous behaviours of the dogs, I found a quality on them that still matches my image of dogs - obedience. I believe the only dialogue in the whole story “chase me”, represents an order to the dogs. Due to the dogs’ obedient nature, they follow the son’s order and start to chase him. Thus the dog is bewildered after the mom gives it a wild blow because it does not understand why it is being attacked, when it is only following orders. This also explains why only the son is being attacked. Since the son said

With sounds and movements, the film told the story in a more engaging way. I was able to hear the mother and son talk, see their emotions, and their struggles to escape. Wright used this advantage of film and made the audience experience the horror far more earlier.The alarm sound and and dark skylines hints the city is in some state of emergency.The spooky sound effects when the beer bottle suddenly moves makes the audience aware that something is moving. This build up of tension using sounds and movements brings us closer to the horror genre much faster than the short story. However, I think Wright’s way of creating this quick build of horror is very cliche. Scenes where bobby drops his toy and when they hear the scream of some unknown man is very common in the horror genre. These classic scenes are obviously telling us somethings is going to happen. This clearness is very different from the short story where we do not know that we are reading the horror genre till the last half of the story. Nethertheless, Wright is still successful in creating this scary and engaging mood. Wright’s film also gives us lots more details on the background of the story. Inferencing from the cars, cloths, and buildings in the film, we know the story is set in an urban area. From the accents of the mother and son, we can guess this area is somewhere in England. The film also gives us