To Kill a Mockingbird: Movie vs Novel

What You See Is Not What You Read Life is full of lessons, the movie version of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is not! Harper Lee entwines these life lessons throughout her novel; however, the movie version fails to incorporate these lessons into its plot. Thus, the movie version must be deemed incomplete, as it is most certain that there are many important lessons that Jem and Scout learn throughout the novel. A few key characters who taught these lessons to the children and who will be the subject of this essay are Ms.Dubose and the morals learnt from her successful fight against morphine addiction, the role of Aunt Alexandra in front of Scout as a female role model and lastly Mr.Dolphus Raymond’s preferred associations with black people and his motives behind such actions. These points all sum up to the movie version of the novel being unquestionably incomplete as the movie portrays a scenario in which it seems that only Atticus Finch and his children are against the racist and prejudice ideas of that time. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to enlighten the reader upon the partialness of To Kill a Mockingbird, the movie. “Don't you say "hey" to me you ugly girl!”(Tom Mulligan) is just one of the few lines that Ms.Dubose says in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, although Ms.Dubose does appear long enough to scold Scout, her story is left untouched, thus, leaving a gap in the movie. Indeed, Ms.Dubose was actually a very important character in the novel because as Atticus says “...she was a great lady.” (Lee 149). Ms. Dubose was a morphine addict and fought her addiction successfully with the help of Jem and Scout, who went to her house everyday and read books to her, however, the children were unaware of her condition and only thought that she was somewhat sick. Thus, when Ms.Dubose died, Jem was bewildered to find out that she died fighting off a morphine addiction. He was even more taken aback when Atticus refers to her as a

Cited: Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. By J. R. R. Tolkien. Dir. Peter Jackson. Perf. Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen and Orlando Bloom. 2001. To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Perf. Gregory Peck, Jhon Megna and Frank Overton. 1962.