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Scarlet Letter Book Vs Movie Essay

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There have been many on-screen movie adaptations that are based on novels from the past. A great example of this would be The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The novel was written in 1850 and progressed the career of Nathaniel Hawthorne who lived in Salem, Massachusetts at the time. The movie adaptation was released in 1995 and stars Demi Moore as Hester Prynne, alongside some other award-winning actors, such as Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall. There were alterations made to the onscreen version that changed how the book and movie was portrayed, including: the time frame in which both begin are completely different starting points, the person narrating the tales are different, and the ending in the movie is dramatically different than the novels ending. Movies makers tend to emphasize or change parts of a novel to make it more exciting and relatable to the viewers, which is exactly what …show more content…

The setting of the book begins at the prison doors where the town folk are awaiting the door to open, so Hester Prynne can make her way to the scaffold with her small infant child named Pearl that was a product of an affair she had with an unknown man. In the movie, it shows Hester's arrival in town while she is in the process of setting up the house while she awaits her husband to join her. It shows everything that happened leading up to the love affair between Hester and Reverend Dimmsdale such as their meeting for the first time, falling in love, and the act of the affair itself. While reading the book you do not get the backstories for the main two characters. All the reader knows is Hester is in prison with a child that was born because of an adulterous act, hence where the Scarlet Letter stitched to her bodice came from. In the movie it adds depth and more pieces to the story and helps with character understanding. Another way the movie adaptation changed things to the story was to change the

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