How does only watching the movie take away details from the story? In Kaye Gibbon’s realistic fiction novel, Ellen Foster, the movie leaves out lots of details from the book. There are many differences between the book and the movie, but the ones that I thought stood out the most were how mama died and how Ellen got kicked out of Nadine’s house. The first big difference between the book and the movie is how Mama died. In the book, Mama took all of her heart medications to end her suffering and Daddy didn’t do anything to stop her and she died. Daddy said, “That’s all the pills she’s got left. She took almost the whole goddamn bottle. . .” This quote shows how Mama had enough of Daddy’s torment and decided to commit suicide. Daddy wanted this to happen and even threatened to …show more content…
There were many times when Daddy abused Mama and she couldn’t do anything because of her disease, but the movie doesn’t include any of this. This clearly shows the big difference between how she died in the book compared to the movie. The second main difference between the book and the movie is how Ellen was kicked out of the house. In the book, Ellen was kicked out of the house on Christmas Day. She pretended that she got a present from her “boyfriend”, to make Dora jealous. Then she said rude things towards Dora, and Nadine threatened to hit her. The narrator stated, “Nadine said I was an ungrateful little bitch and I needed to have the hell beat out of me.” Nadine said this after Ellen told Dora that she was too stupid to use the microscope. In the movie, Ellen was kicked out on Christmas Eve after Nadine and Dora were disrespectful toward her painting. This change takes away a lot of context on how Ellen pretended to get a boyfriend to make Dora jealous. Ellen did this because getting a boyfriend was the one thing that Dora couldn’t have. This portrays the blatant difference between how she was kicked