Reading James Joyce’s “The Dead” and viewing the film adaptation directed by John Huston has sparked many questions. In general, the film adaptation follows the plot of the short story closely; it brings to life the characters very well by utilizing visuals, music, lighting, and performance to represent what is being said in between lines of dialogue in the text. The movie, understandably, had to be shortened up slightly to fit the time slot, as a result, some smaller scenes in the story were deleted from the movie or condensed with other scenes. However, by doing this, it raises some curiosities as to why. Some characters roles were made larger and some had less of an impact when adapted to the screen. More specifically, why was Freddy Malins given a larger role bickering with his mother in the movie adaptation, while in the …show more content…
Susan Lorsch puts it best saying, “The basic correspondence between Freddy and Gabriel is that the joker and the speechmaker both rhetorically accommodate their audiences” (165). In the film, Gabriel accommodates his audience by being an incredibly stern and serious man who makes a life changing realization at the end of the movie. Freddy, on the other hand, accommodates his audience by easing some of the tension between characters and livening up the more melancholy scenes with his drunken banter. Freddy’s disorderliness is the proverbial counterweight to the emotional rock that Gabriel is portrayed as in Huston’s film adaptation of The