The two short stories are similar because they
both involve love. The stories are and different because they deal with two
unique aspects of life. One of the
stories was about a young gentleman by the name of Giovanni and his love with
the beautiful Beatrice. The other story
was about a young boy by the name of Paul and his love with the theater.
The existence of love was present in both
stories and both times the love lead the characters astray. The existence of love lead both characters in
to trouble. Both characters were warned
about the trouble that they were headed for
by the people that were looking out for their best interests. In Rappaccini's Daughter, Giovanni's professor
warned him about a myth of a woman who was fed poison little by little until
she was immune to this poison and could kill with her lips or touch. This was a parallel of the situation
surrounding Beatrice, Rappaccini's daughter's apparent poisonous body. Giovanni disregards his professor, hence
ignoring the warnings. In the story
Paul's Case, Paul's father forbids him
to go to work as a usher in the theater, because of Paul's trouble in
school. His father calls the hall and
tells Paul's boss not to employ him anymore. His father even tells all of his
friends in theater not to see Paul.
Paul, like Giovanni does not listen to his peers. Paul steals money from the print-shop and
goes to New York to live the good life like the people that he used to seat at
Carnegie Hall.
The stories deal with three different types of
love. Rappaccini's Daughter, deals with the love of science and the love of a
woman. Today there are scientists, who
are doing experiments on people "for the better of human kind". These scientists are too busy thinking if
they could, without thinking if they should.
This is just like Rappaccini had
done to his daughter, he turned her into a monster with out thinking if
it was just to do this even for the sake of science. Another type of love was Paul's passion for
theater and the good life. In Paul's
Case, Paul is different than every one
else. He grew up in the industrial
revolution and money was every thing.
Paul loved the theater which made him different from all the other
kids. I think that one of Willa Cather's
biggest influences' for this story was her teaching career. She might have taught a student with similar
behavior problems as Paul and built off that personality. And she probably knew kids who were different
and were treated like and outcasts.
Films adopted from stories often depend on
visual aids rather than descriptive language.
This is why in Rappaccini's Daughter and in Paul's Case there are
differences between the film and the short story. Although the stories are relatively the same as the books there are minor
differences and have a small effect on the ideas they are trying to get across.
In Rappaccini's Daughter Giovanni witnesses
flowers, butterfly, and a lizard die, at the hands of Beatrice, but in the film
we only see the flowers and the butterfly die.
The lizard probably does not die in the film because that would cost
more money, while not infringing on the potency of her poison. Another time the film was different from the
story was when Beatrice came out and hugged the deadly plant. This is out of order from the books
perspective, in the book this happens after he is in the garden. Another cost cut would be Beatrice's purple
dress was the same one throughout the film.
One event that was changed was in the book there he breathes on a spider
in his room and it dies; this does not
take place in the film, probably because of cost. The film substitutes this
with a scene which is not in the story.
Giovanni is walking down the street and his class mate gives him
flowers, they die almost instantly. This showed he too had become part of
Rappaccini's experiment.
In Paul's Case
most of the difference was the budget cuts, but some of things were just
changed. One way that they kept that
they kept the budget low was that they did not use Carnegie Hall. Instead they showed a small concert
hall. Also in the film it gives a poor
portrayal of Paul's room and of Cordelia Street. The bad room and street was another budget
issue, it had to be this way because it would be very costly to film the actual
Whaldorf Astoria and the street as it would have been in that time period. One scene that never took place in the story
that is in the film is when Paul saw his father asking the clerk about him in
New York. I think that this is shown to let the audience know
that it is the end of Paul's rich boy charade. While in the story he just reads
about the theft in the newspaper, Then leaves the hotel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Willa Cather were two writers
who were born on the east coast, but schooled at opposite ends of the
continent. Even though they were of
different sexes and backgrounds they both became respected and famous writers.
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