Debate: The Life you save may be your own", Flannery O'Connor - Pro book

Whenever we see a movie based on a book, several people will ask which one is the best. After brief comparisons, we conclude that the book is always the most viable option.

The expectations are (as it is well known? Is it? É uma pressuposição dada ou?) a book-based film will be as faithful as possible to it. However, the cinematic adaptations of a book do not achieve a complete fidelity and are pressured by several factors involved in creating a film. While working on this film vs. book topic, we have stumbled on a major question: “Does the movie in question betray its literary source?” After reading and viewing the short story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and studying Thomas Leitch's "Adaptation Studies at a Crossroad" article, we easily conclude that the film is not true to the original text, which compromises the public's experience.

Firstly, the film focuses on its commercial side, compromising its character. To exemplify the commercial approach, we can concentrate on how Lucynell's appearance was changed to be more appealing.  Also, the change of the ending might be a marketing strategy by giving the viewers the beautiful happy ending.

As we read the short story, we realize the meaning of colors and how they can stimulate the readers' minds to create a prior idea of the characters. Unfortunately, the adaptation is performed in black and white, which breaks a connection that could exist with the viewers’ imagination. Here, we have a perfect example on how the conditioning of producing a film can compromise the original idea.  Contrariwise, the characters and the story in the book are never compromised by any film making decisions/conditions. Furthermore, you get to know the characters better in the book than in the movie. In the short story, for example, Lucynell (the daughter), is wearing a short blue organdy dress and has pink gold hair and blue eyes, giving the readers the possibility of acknowledging an immediate childish and innocent image of Lucynell.

There are several changes in the characters descriptions and in the dialogue, distorting the original conception of O'Connor's tale. One of the cons of the film adaptation is that you can’t stimulate your mind using your imagination while watching it, an adaptation is always someone else’s perspective while when reading a book, you can create your own interpretation at your own pace (on the contrary, a film has limited storytelling time and a specific conduct for watching it). The ending is clearly the pivotal difference between the short story and the movie: in the first one, Tom Shiftlet abandons Lucynell Crater at The Hot Stop; however, in the second one, he comes back for her and that change can influence not only on the perspective that viewers/readers may have about the characters but also on the perspective of the whole tale. Therefore, this book-based film represents an interpretation where concrete aspects of the story are lost and it should never be a substitute of the reading as the book provides perspectives of the story in its whole.