To Kill A Mockingbird Book Vs Movie Essay

Written by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird follows the childhood of a young girl named Jean Louis ‘Scout’ Finch in segregated Alabama during the early twentieth century. In their free time, Scout and her brother, Jem, investigate a neighbor who is known as a murderer, and are determined to meet him. When Atticus, a lawyer and Scout’s father/only parent, is placed as the defendant of a black man, against a white family, he, Scout, and Jem are faced with moral issues like never before. In 1962, two years after the book’s publication, Robert Mulligan produced a movie based on the best-selling novel by Harper Lee. Although it was well received, the movie did lack some influential and key scenes from the book. Arguably the most significant scene absent from the production would be Scout and Jem’s church service with Calpurnia. Other key figures that are not found in the movie would be Aunt Alexandra, along with a drunk, Dolphus Raymond. The absence of these characters as well as events do in fact change the movie as well as the viewer’s feelings towards certain characters. With that being said, since the movie excluded some characters and scenes, the viewer does not become as familiar with Maycomb, or as comfortable with the characters, as a reader of the book does.

Its significance can be argued as it gives Scout and Jem a look into the black community and their support for the wrongly accused rapist, Tom Robinson. Not only that, but also, Scout and Jem noticed that Calpurnia spoke differently, almost in a different dialect. When they questioned her as to why she did that, she answered, ‘“Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses?”’ (Lee 167). In this scene,