Themes and Narrative Perspective in To Kill a Mockingbird: A Comparison Between the Novel and the Film
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Harper Lee’s only novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), skillfully addresses the interwoven themes of racial injustice, courage, loss of innocence, and gender roles, as witnessed by its narrator, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, this deeply textured part-bildungsroman relates the often-picaresque adventures of Scout (aged six at the outset), her older brother, Jem, and their friend Dill in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb from 1933 to 1936. In its more somber second part, the novel also tells the story of an African-American man, Tom Robinson, who is wrongfully accused of rape by his “white trash” accusers, Bob Ewell and his teenaged daughter, Mayella. When Scout’s and Jem’s father, the principled attorney Atticus Finch, agrees to defend Robinson at his rape trial, the children discover that justice is not color-blind. This essay compares the novel with the Academy Award-winning 1962 film adaptation of the same name, arguing that in spite of Lee’s own enthusiastic endorsement of the latter, the motion picture is not the faithful replication that it is generally purported to be, given that it both simplifies and distorts the novel’s principal themes while also diminishing Scout, the novel’s central protagonist. The sole beneficiary of these changes, this essay demonstrates, is screen acting legend Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch, a character whose aggrandizement in the film occurs at the expense of every other protagonist. Moreover, in order to accommodate Peck/Atticus as the film’s central character, the adaptation creates a narrative illogicality through its decision to adopt an omniscient viewpoint whenever Peck appears in scenes not depicted in the book, and which do not involve Scout. In doing so, the film fails to resolve the novel’s own (lesser) narrative inconsistency.
Abstract
Harper Lee’s only novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), skillfully addresses the interwoven themes of racial injustice, courage, loss of innocence, and gender roles, as witnessed by its narrator, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, this deeply textured part-bildungsroman relates the often-picaresque adventures of Scout (aged six at the outset), her older brother, Jem, and their friend Dill in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb from 1933 to 1936. In its more somber second part, the novel also tells the story of an African-American man, Tom Robinson, who is wrongfully accused of rape by his “white trash” accusers, Bob Ewell and his teenaged daughter, Mayella. When Scout’s and Jem’s father, the principled attorney Atticus Finch, agrees to defend Robinson at his rape trial, the children discover that justice is not color-blind. This essay compares the novel with the Academy Award-winning 1962 film adaptation of the same name, arguing that in spite of Lee’s own enthusiastic endorsement of the latter, the motion picture is not the faithful replication that it is generally purported to be, given that it both simplifies and distorts the novel’s principal themes while also diminishing Scout, the novel’s central protagonist. The sole beneficiary of these changes, this essay demonstrates, is screen acting legend Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch, a character whose aggrandizement in the film occurs at the expense of every other protagonist. Moreover, in order to accommodate Peck/Atticus as the film’s central character, the adaptation creates a narrative illogicality through its decision to adopt an omniscient viewpoint whenever Peck appears in scenes not depicted in the book, and which do not involve Scout. In doing so, the film fails to resolve the novel’s own (lesser) narrative inconsistency.
참고문헌 (21)
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