Compare And Contrast Benjamin Hood

As a particularly judgmental reader, I depend on narrator reliability a lot. Novels, for the most part, are tales of the human struggle and experience and all of the mistakes and successes they come along with. If I am reading about every dirty little secret in a family, I need at least an accurate portrayal of their motivations in order to come to a conclusion on their characters. From personal experience, I can say that one of the hardest parts of coming from a unhappy or divorced couple family is that realizing that our parents’ relationship is not what is considered normal. Growing up in a family like this and then writing about it can alter the reality of the events that took place. Paul is in no way an unbiased onlooker. In Rick Moody’s
He comes off as uncaring, unfaithful, and at times creepy. In the movie, Ben acts almost the same way, but he seems more human like he has good intentions but keeps messing up in spite of them. We see some of his attempts to be affectionate with Elena. We see that his relationship with Janey has a lot more to it than just sex, as much as he would like to think otherwise. These differences are in part because in the book Ben’s thoughts seem to be his own and we see him messing up, but without the good intentions; however, in the movie we can see how Paul’s anger at his father’s affair could influence his perception of his father’s motivations, thoughts, and feelings. He did not have the distance necessary to see his father’s real reasons for his extra-marital affair thereby possibly influencing the authenticity of Ben’s
I do not know what excuse Elena would have for marrying someone she never really felt love and connection with. Maybe it was a convenient marriage for both of them, but in this book, there are times where they show they care about each other, but there are never moments where they show that they were ever truly in love with each other. Elena’s character in the book is one of the only characters who is more relatable in the book than in the movie. For the most part Ben receives the bulk of the criticism in the book and Elena seems like someone who has been betrayed in her marriage and the lack of love in her life has closed her off and forced her to become cynical, cold, and distant. Paul’s different depiction of her in the book was probably from seeing her as the victim in his parent’s marriage. The movie, giving us more of an objective point of view, allows us to see that it takes two to have an unloving