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.
|