A compare and contrast analysis of the book “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee and its film version.
This paper examines the masterpiece, “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee, about racial injustices and gender discrimination observed through the eyes of a young six-year old girl, as well as the movie version of the book produced by Robert Mulligan, and presents a comparison of the two. It shows how the movie was made black and white, in such a technologically revolutionary period, in order to capture the gloominess and the dullness of the Depression era and how the book paints a far more effective picture of that time period probably because it gave room to the author to get her personal experience into the play for she was a resident of the Southern town. The book symbolizes the theme of innocence and pureness through the use of mockingbird. However in the film version, the most fundamental theme of the novel has deviated slightly in terms of the plot by emphasizing more on the theme of racial prejudice than the theme of innocence. Both the movie and the book have been recipients of awards.
“The representation of the world where racial injustices and gender discrimination prevail are observed through the eyes of a young six-year old girl whose widowed father is not only a man of words but is also a man of deeds. Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch, the tomboy’s father and a principled attorney (Marja: B06) who fights for the rights of a local black man wrongly charged with the rape of a white woman in their segregated town (Marja: B06). Gregory Peck has managed to do justice to his role and Robert Mulligan deserves equal credit for an aptly portrayal of the novel. However, since Lee wrote the novel keeping in mind her horrifying personal experiences as a child that gave birth to the protagonist of her novel, Stout, the novel turned out to be far more effective in its representation of the Depression-era Alabama than the movie version of it (Marja: B06).”