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Comparing The Body And Stand By Me, By Stephen King

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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The movies "Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand by Me" are based from Stephen Kings' novellas. The movie "Shawshank Redemption" is a drama film released in 1994. The movie was based on Stephen Kings' novella "Rita Hayworth" and "Shawshank Redemption". The setting of this movie was in the year 1940's-1960's in Portland, Maine and the Shawshank State Penitentiary. The story of the movie was about a banker named Andy Dufresne who says he is innocent and he was not the one who murdered his wife and her lover.

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Gordie has no trust in Chase to be in his life without being destructive in his and his family’s present lifestyle. This is further elaborated in the situations of Chase running away from Gordie with his money, and Chase stealing and selling Gordie’s guitar. In addition, Gordie no longer thinks of Chase as his brother because their relationship is so distant. Gordie feels this distance because of Chase’s shameful life choices leading up to him being a drug addict and killing Richard Cross. This climaxes to Gordie wishing his brother was dead, a very powerful statement letting a reader know how much Chase’s drug use has affected his life.

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Without the narrator even knowing why, all the boys become distant from him and seem to have formed an alliance against him after they had met his father. They had tried

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Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.

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However, he was pulled of by one of his friends, which in the novella is his friend Gordie, that makes him very angry and causes a conflict between the two. Gordie justified his actions based on the fact that the driver could’ve reported about them to police, saying “Teddy, you dodge anything after we see what we are going to see, but until then no one is supposed to see us” (334). While on the other hand, when Chris pulls Teddy off the railways in the movie, he justifies his action by saying “I was just trying to save your life, man,” and then doesn’t allow the

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Fear eventually catches up to them because what the father had been afraid of since the beginning has finally come. He dies, leaving the boy to fend on his own. Mccarthy concluded his novel with a tragic ending filled with gloom and

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In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part. One of the first apparent emotions the boy experiences with the death of his father is loneliness to make this section memorable. The boy expresses this sentiment when he stays with his father described as, “When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again,” (McCarthy 281). The definition of loneliness is, “sadness because one has no friends or company.”

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It is seen continuously through Chris and Teddy’s insecurities stemming from an inescapable reality where they may never rid themselves of their family’s reputation or eventually turn into them, and Vern’s fear of being a joke and outcast for the rest of his life. In Gordie’s case, this is present through his father’s lack of interest in him, more so after the death of his brother, Danny, who was his parent’s pride and joy. Gordie is constantly at odds with his own thoughts of having been the one to die and not having to push himself to equate to the successful standards set by his brother. Gordie’s apprehension and fear around his ability to live up to his brother’s accomplishments due to the distant nature of his parents is supported by the quotes, “I wanted to share my friends’ enthusiasm, but I couldn’t. That summer at home I had become the invisible boy.”

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