Comparing The Body And Stand By Me, By Stephen King

In the 1982 novella, The Body, as well as the 1986 movie adaptation, Stand by Me, there are many similarities, as well as differences, in certain scenes, locations, and characterizations, however, the two versions accomplish the same story goals of a group of four boys having crucial life experiences while on a trip to go see a dead body on a railroad. The book, The Body, was written by Steven King and released in the 1982 collection of stories entitled Different Seasons. This collection also included the stories that inspired the movies Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Apt Pupil (1998). The story is a fictionalized tale of events that happened in King’s early life. The driving plot point of the dead kid, Ray Bower, on the train tracks, is based

The story is a coming-of-age tale about the four boys and how they grew up through these experiences, as well as the importance of their friendship. A notable scene where the importance of their friendship is displayed best is when Teddy DuChamp is playing “train dodge” and refuses to leave the tracks before the train gets closer. To save his friend, Chris runs onto the tracks and picks up Teddy, kicking and screaming, and carries him away merely seconds before the train passes over where the two boys are just standing. This not only emphasizes the importance of their friendship but also the mischaracterization of Chris Chambers by the town who looks down on him because of his family. In the character tropes page for Stand By Me, he is defined as a “White Sheep” character in a family of black sheep where his father is a drunk, one of his brothers is in jail for rape, and the other is a gang

Although the two editions of this story have different endings for the characters, the central theme of growing up is prevalent in both and shows how the characters matured after they eventually grew apart. After the boys finally see the dead body towards the end of the book, Gordie starts to realize that death is a permanent thing and this experience changes him and makes him grow up, however, seeing the body is not his only experience with death in his life. Early in the book, Gordie refers to himself as the “invisible boy” after his older brother dies and his parents are more fixated on the loss of a child than the one that they still have alive. In an essay by Claire Rooney on WordPress, she quotes that “The guilty feeling haunts him throughout the story even though he has done nothing wrong” and goes on to talk about how that causes him to wish it was him who died instead of Dennis to spare his parents because he feels that they cared more about him than Gordie