TKAM Comparative Analysis

      The To Kill A Mockingbird movie adaptation cut out several critical scenes that hammer home the message of racism being a blight upon humanity. Without said scenes, the message has less impact, and doesn't show the secondary meaning: It's possible to stop being racist. Yes, it may be difficult, and take 19-ish chapters (months) to do, but you can still do it. If that's gone, it won't hit close to home and lead to shed prejudices. To bluntly put it: It's like chopping up a quote into cherry-picked pieces to twist it whatever way you want.
     
       There is a character in the book, Aunt Alexandra, who doesn't make it into the film. Her absence may well be the most critical difference between the two works, as she shows that people can stop being bigoted. In the book, it says, "Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a n****r-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He’s ruinin‘ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.” (Just for reference, Francis Hancock said this). As evidenced by the use of racial profanity, she is somewhat more racist than the rest of our characters. She also attempts to maintain such attitudes throughout her stay with the Finches. However, these attitudes shift as the novel progresses. On page 239, it states, "'Tom’s dead.'

Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth.
'They shot him,” said Atticus. 'He was running. It was during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front of them—'
'Didn’t they try to stop him? Didn’t they give him any warning?' Aunt Alexandra’s voice shook." This shows that she's started to view black people as people, as emphasized by the shaking voice and lack of racial profanity. The meaning of this is that people can change. This sub-meaning would have, if it was present, affected a lot more people in the form of a movie. Without that sub-meaning, a problem is presented, but a way to be part of the solution is not, even though a solution exists. If this was made part of the film, it would probably have targeted enough people to substantially increase the speed of the civil rights movement. But, then again, we'd never really know.
      
      Based on this evidence, I can say that the film version is definitely less effective then the novel. Need more proof? In the book, it says, "'Wh—oh yes, you mean why do I pretend? Well, it’s very simple,' he said. 'Some folks don’t—like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with ‘em, I don’t care if they don’t like it. I do say I don’t care if they don’t like it, right enough— but I don’t say the h**l with ’em, see?'

Dill and I said, 'No sir.'
'I try to give ‘em a reason, you see.' This is a very well hidden pro-integration message. Dolphus Raymond pretends he's drunk in order to have a "Get Out Of Being Racist Free" card. Harper Lee clearly wanted to spread that message: we should not be racist. However, that scene was left on the cutting room floor, ripping a lot of power from behind it like muscle from Tom's left arm.



And then the civil rights movement came along, so there's that.