Books vs. Movie

About the Clive Cussler novel Sahara I recently saw that it has been made into a movie. So it piqued my interest because it was an engaging story that i thoroughly enjoyed, and so i rented it. After doing so, I noted many different conflicting concepts between the book and the movie. First of all, in the movie, the female actor was significantly more involved in the action of the movie than she was in the book. She really holds a very minor role and engages in very few action sequences in the book, but in the movie she was in the center of the action and she took part in many rescue missions and she was in the middle of the conflict and the climax. I very well remember her being off in a safe place while these actions were taking place in the book. I thought this was odd that the movie producers could write so far off script as to do this. This shows how the producers are allowed to go into such "creative liberties" and stray of the traditional plot line in order to fuel the interests of the public. The public always loves a romantic. Two tough guys going through and saving the planet would only appeal to the male spectrum of the public, but by varying the plot to make it more romance based it includes the interests of the females as well and makes it a date night film and will make more profit. This has happened in many other book-to-movie situations, such as The Chronicles of Narnia and especially in the case of Beowulf . In Beowulf, Beowulf travels to the foreign country and slays the monster, then slays the monster's mother. However, in the movie, Beowulf does slay the monster, but the similarities stop there. After that, he goes after the monsters mother and ends up falling in love with her and they have a child together and Beowulf has a secret life. Talk about a creative liberty?? The movie producers are able to throw in the whole monster hero love in there somehow in some twisted way to make them able to incorperate attractive women, drama, and love into a traditionally solid action classic. The way this occurs throughout our society is bizarre and almost disrespectful to the authors in that the producers can just chuck the real storyline out the window so they can try to make a little more green. And in my opinion, after reading the book, the movie version isn't even as good with the Hollywood makeup and drama. In summation I am just commenting and criticizing the fact that in our society, the truths and storyline that the author thought was best for the book are put at the end of the priority list and the number one focus is really always on the money.

Willie Stark

During the All the Kings Men seminar discussion we discussed whether or not Willie Stark was a great man.  There were many sides to this question and they were very dependant on what your definition of greatness was.  I believe however that he was a very great man.  I believe that greatness is determined solely by the amount of success that you have in whatever it is that you do and Willie stark is definitely a very successful politition.  Some of the things that he did might not have been good based on our typical set of morals but he got a huge amount done while in office and he had lots of support from the people, even if they didn't know some of the stuff that went on behind the scenes.  He was an extremely successful politician that would have gone on much farther up the political ladder had he not been shot by Adam Stanton.  He always got the votes no matter what he had to do to get them and he made people respect him whether they really liked him or not that I believe is the mark of a great man.

Hands

Sherwood Anderson is obsessed with hands throughout the book Winesburg, Ohio.  He uses the word hand or hands 26 times in the book "Hands" alone.  He also uses it an exaggerated amount of times throughout the rest of the book.  Along with just using the word hand or hands a lot he also takes some time in each story to describe the different characters hands. When describing doctor Reefy in the beginning of "Paper Pills" Anderson refers to Reefy's hands.  He describes Dr. Reefy as being "an old man with a white beard and huge nose and huge nose and hands."(Anderson 16).  In "Mother" Anderson is portraying a conversation between Elizabeth Willard and her son George, George leaves and on his way out Anderson writes "By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly still, listless.  Her long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair."(24). this kind of gives you a picture of what this woman is like and pretty much sums up her character as a pale, weak , sickly person.  In "The Philosopher" Anderson describes the saloon keeper as having "peculiarly marked hands"(31).  He then goes on to describe how they are covered in red birthmarks that become deeper red as he gets more excited and then says that they look as though they were dipped in blood.  This description gives me a negative image of the saloon keeper and must have some sort of symbolism or deeper meaning since he goes into such great detail and to such great lengths to describe them.  I am not entirely sure why Anderson is so interested in the hands of his characters and in hands in general but it must have some great importance to him.