Lord of the Flies: The Unsuccessful Adaptation

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Lord of the Flies: The Unsuccessful Adaptation

The Da Vinci Code, The Colour Purple, The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings – long is the list of famous, classic novels that have transformed into equally classic motion pictures. In our increasingly media-aware society, it is not uncommon to hear news of books becoming multi-million dollar productions on the big screen. Countless have been successful, however, a select few have failed to follow suit in their attempts to reach epic ‘Harry-Potter-like-success’. Such is the fate of The Lord of the Flies, a movie adaptation based on William Golding’s classic novel of the same name. Unfortunately, The Lord of the Flies movie, unlike its novel counterpart, fails to excite the imagination of audiences, due to its failure at capturing the true spirit of the novel. Overall, when comparing the Lord of the Flies movie and novel, the novel is superior due to it attention to detail, its emphasis on themes, and its focus on character development.

        To begin with, the Lord of the Flies movie lacks important details from the novel that help contribute to Golding’s main message. For instance, there are evident differences in how the situation and setting are introduced in both the novel and the movie. The novel starts off with young British schoolboys, who have suffered a plane crash with no adult left alive. The boys scatter around the island and are brought together by the call of the conch. By comparison, the movie starts of with American schoolboys who crash in the water and unite while they pull their life raft onto the island.

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        As well, the appearance and characteristics of the characters are dissimilar to how Golding describes them in the novel. In the novel, Golding describes Ralph as lean, athletic, blonde, and with a ‘golden body’ (p. 11). Piggy is described as fat and asthmatic, while Jack is a fiery, freckled, unattractive, red head. However, in the movie, Ralph is fits the stereotype of an All-American, curly headed, skinny boy. Piggy, though still large in the movie, is not asthmatic in the movie. Jack, in the movie, is a bleach-blonde, able-bodied, and attractive character. Overall, the movie fails to capture tiny details ...

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