Comparison of The Shining and Maus I Essay

The Holocaust was a very important tragic event that occurred in history. Many of the stories belonging to the jews were lost and never told, many of the innocent souls were unknown, but never forgotten. For years, people have tried to dig up these stories and explain it to many generations, because the Holocaust wasn't something to be forgotten about or left unknown. Sometimes it is hard to understand the truth without a visual. Movies such as Schindler’s list or books such as Maus try to give a message as well as a visual to better understand the content.

In recent years, it has become popular for many of America's great literary masterpieces to be adapted into film versions. As easy a task as it may sound, there are many problems that can arise from trying to adapt a book into a movie, being that the written word is what makes the novel a literary work of art. Many times, it is hard to express the written word on camera because the words that express so much action and feeling can not always be expressed the same way through pictures and acting. One example of this can be found in the comparison of Ken Kesey's novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the film version directed in 1975 by Milos Forman.

When one hears the title I Am Legend being mentioned, they usually associate it with Will Smith and the terrific job he did in portraying the protagonist of the story Robert Neville. However, what they typically leave out is the equally terrific job done by author Richard Matheson coming up with the storyline and writing the original book version. While Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic science fiction book, I Am Legend, and Francis Lawrence’s post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, I Am Legend, both have similarities and differences, in the end, the original book version prevails mainly because the movie version alters the original storyline too much.

Gone with the Wind is one of my favorite love stories of all time. Margaret Mitchell wrote the beautiful story in 1928 and first published in 1936. The book is one of the best-selling novels to this date. Shortly after the book was published, it sold over one million copies within six months, as well as being awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The book immediately caught the eye of a young producer named David O. Selznick who immediately purchased the film rights for $50,000. The movie was just as big of a hit as the novel. Gone with the Wind won ten Academy Awards out of thirteen nominations. By today’s box office records, after adjusting for inflation, Gone with the Wind is still the most successful film in box office history. (IMdB) This

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” What is fear? Fear can be a noun or a verb. In the noun form, it is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. In the verb form, it is to be afraid of someone or something that is dangerous, painful, or threatening. If one person looks into fear, then that person becomes feared. But imagine a whole society or community looking into fear. The fear not only gets larger as it spreads, but it also gets more fearful than it already is. The power of fear can be displayed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and in Ronald Oakley’s “The Great Fear”. As fear moves on from one mind to the next, it leaves the

Peter Jackson’s 2009 film, The Lovely Bones, is based off of the New York Times bestseller novel written by Alice Sebold. Both the book and the movie adaptation tell the story of a young, 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon who is brutally murdered by her neighbor. In both versions, Susie narrates her story from the place between Heaven and Earth, the “in-between,” showing the lives of her family and friends and how each of their lives have changed since her murder. However, the film adaptation and the original novel differ in the sense of the main character focalization throughout, the graphic explanatory to visual extent, and the relationship between the mother and father.

Throughout modern history, various historical texts, personal accounts, and books have been published regarding the devastating events of World War 2 and the Holocaust. Two of the most prominent novels written about the Holocaust are Maus and The Hiding Place. Maus is a graphic novel illustrated by Arthur Spiegelman in 1980 and details the catastrophic effects of the Holocaust on the Jewish survivors of it. Another notable book similar to Maus is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. The Hiding Place is a biography written and published in 1937 and details the story of a young Christian family during World War 1. Throughout these accounts, contrasting themes are explored such as love, anger, forgiveness, and guilt. Although there are various similarities, there are also extreme differences in the characters responses to the Holocaust as well as the themes present within both novels.

Stephen King’s The Shining has maintained its cult status since its release in 1977. The Shining begins with Jack Torrance receiving a position as the winter caretaker for The Overlook Hotel, an isolated hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Jack hopes the stay will be therapeutic and allow him to focus on writing, family, and less on alcohol. As time progresses, unsettling events begin to transpire for Jack, his son Danny, and his wife Wendy. The intensity of the gothic novel came to life by the legendary Stanley Kubrick in 1980. The book was admired by fans, but Kubrick’s reimagining made it the iconic classic that it is today. Stephen King was not as fond of the movie. Although some of Kubrick’s take on The Shining complements the book, King

When comparing the book Twilight, written by Stephanie Meyers, with the movie Twilight, screenplay written by Melissa Rosenberg and produced by Catherine Hardwicke, there are multiple visual differences between the two. Some important scenes were changed or even omitted from the original text, leaving noticeable gaps in the movie’s plot. There are big and important differences, which are obvious, while there are also less important differences between them such as names and small missing details. The most important differences between the book and movie were when Bella tells Edward she knows he is a Vampire and when Edward saves Bella from Tyler’s van in the beginning. In reading the book before seeing the movie

What is horror? Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader. An example of a horror film is "The Shining", directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick was a well-known director, producer, writer and cinematographer. His films comprised of unique, qualitative scenes that are still memorable but one iconic film in his collection of work is The Shining. Many would disagree and say that The Shining was not his best work and he could have done better yet, there are still those who would say otherwise. This film was not meant to be a “scary pop-up” terror film but

The novel, “The Shining”, was published by Stephen King in 1977 and was later adapted into a film in 1980 by Stanley Kubrick. With the film being based off the novel, the two had many similarities. All the main characters from the novel were in the film, The Overlook is the main setting, Jack snaps and loses his mind, and many other small details that were similar between the two. Although the two were similar, there were also many differences. Both novel and movie focus on the agents, but it was clear that different agents were emphasized and there were major differences on how they were emphasized as well.

A number of strange incidents occur throughout the story. Jack finds a wasps' nest while maintaining the roof, uses an appropriate wasp bomb on it, and puts it in Danny's room. That night, although Jack had checked there were no wasps still in the nest, Danny is stung several times, and when Jack manages to put a bowl over the nest, there are many wasps trapped inside. Then in an almost hypnotic fit after spending too much time going through the hotel's papers in the boiler room, Jack smashes the radio, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world as snow has fallen heavily, and reaching the nearest town has become impossible except by snowmobile.

Television today serves as a method to confront our societal fears in a comfortable setting, like books and oral tales did hundreds of years ago. The film The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, although a modern medium, still draws from the original gothic novel. Compared to The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Shining plays on the same classic and applicable anxiety of finding terror within the nuclear family. Kubrick uses the gothic theme to address horror originating from family relationships, additionally taking the idea of “the gothic novel” to a heightened level through invoking despair in his audience rather than hope as Walpole did in his novel. Despair in The Shining is conveyed by

The Holocaust was a traumatic event that most people can’t even wrap their minds around. Libraries are filled with books about the Holocaust because people are both fascinated and horrified to learn the details of what survivors went through. Maus by Art Spiegelman and Night by Elie Wiesel are two highly praised Holocaust books that illustrate the horrors of the Holocaust. Night is a traditional narrative that mainly focuses on Elie’s experiences throughout the holocaust while Maus is a comic book that focuses on the relationship between Art and his father and the generational trauma Art is going through as well as his father’s experiences during the Holocaust. Night and Maus are very different styles of

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, tells the story of his father's survival in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, as well as about Art's relationship with his father, brought out through the interview process and writing the two books. The subject matter of the two books is starkly juxtaposed with the style in which it was written, that is, it is a graphic novel. In most simple terms, the story is told in a sort of comic, with characters represented as animals based on their race or nationality (Jews are presented as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs). While the cartoon had once been reserved for rather childish and light subject matter, Spiegelman has brought it to a whole new level as a medium capable