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Devil's Arithmetic Movie And Book Comparison Essay

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Books and movies often have at least some differences so the movie is not overly long. Usually, the book version is much better than the movie created, but this is not always the case. In the Devil's Arithmetic movie, there are many differences between the book and the movie, some for the good, and some, for the worse.

The Devil's Arithmetic book, written by Jane Yolen and the movie version which came out in 1999, are both very touching and sad stories, taking place in the holocaust time period. They are about a young girl named Hannah, who is a jew. It is Passover and Hannah does not want to go, she thinks it is boring, and is tired of remembering the holocaust. Her Aunts and Uncles try to tell her about their experiences in the camps, but …show more content…

Hannah is 12-13 in the book, but in the movie she is at least 16, most likely 17. Also, Hannah has a little brother named Aaron in the book, in the movie Hannah is an only child. Other differences in characters would be that Shmuel in the book is big and strong and gets married to Fayge. In the movie, however, Shmuel is a scrawny, normal person, representing no physical strength at all, and Fayge isn't even a character. Another huge difference is that Gityl doesn't even exist! Gityl is a very important character and helps shape Hannah's personality in the camp. More characters that are missing in the movie would be, Rachel, Esther, Wolfe, Reuven, Tzipporah, Yitzchak, and a few others. This amount of characters being taken from the book just makes the movie more empty and pointless. Next is the plot. For the most part, the plot is the same, but there are still differences. One of the things that was different from the book was that the Jews decided to have a Seder at the camp so Rivka would feel better, but in the book no such thing happened, most likely because in the book Rivka’s mother was dead before Hannah arrived at the camp, while in the movie Rivka’s mother was killed while Hannah was there. Also, when the Jews were being put into box cars in the book, in the movie they were put in trucks instead. This may not seem like a noteworthy difference, but trust me, it is! In the box car, it is hard to breath, it smells terrible, and several people die inside it. These details of how horrible just the trip to the camp was, helps us see how bad and terrible the Nazis treated the Jews. In the book, they are loaded into trucks with huge openings that let in lots of air. Making the ride much more tolerable, the movie also hardly mentioned the ride to the camp at

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