There are multiple differences and similarities between the book, The Body, and the movie, Stand by me. In the book Teddy decides to dodge a train. Gordie has to wrestle and tear him away from the train tracks. Chris, the peacemaker in the book, has to later break up the fight and resolve their conflict. In the movie Chris has to get Teddy from the tracks and begins to fight with him. A major attribute of the text that was not empasized in the story was their bad luck. Both the text and movie empasizes how they had bad luck on their side when they flipped three tails and one head. The movie does not show when Gordie is picked to go get food how the worker tries to cheat Gordie out of his money multiple times (343-344).
POINT OF VIEW
Both the story and book use first person narrative by Gordie. In the movie you find out Gordie's insights and thoughts as the thirty year old man is telling the story. Along with this, the movie has more dialogue in it. The book is more of Gordie's thoughts as opposed to dialogue and his thoughts added in. In the movie Gordie wants to return to Ray Browers sight and look for what he was carrying and the bucket that he was using. The movie decided to leave this out.
CHARACTERIZATION
The movie does relate well to the book by showing the same slang that Stephen King decided to use. A similiarity is the relationships that the boys have with their parents. Gordie does not have a relationship with his parents especially his father and Teddy feels very strongly about his father even though he hurt him. "It was weird to me how, then, Teddy could care so much about his father, who practically tried to kill him. And I couldn't give a sh!t about my old man, and he hadn't laid a hand on me since I was three!" The book depicts Chris as a true peacemaker; however, in the movie he is not as strongly described. Also in the book, after Ace from the dumpyard insults Teddy, Chris has to comfort him and tell him Ace is wrong (351-353). In the movie all the movies comfort and talk to Teddy which takes away from Chris' part. Stand by me switches the roles of Gordie and Chris. Gordie is the leader and who everyone turns to for the answer. In The Body Chris is the strong one who comforts everyone.
SETTING
The first difference in settings is that in the book is taken place in Castle Rock, Maine in 1960. In the film the setting is in Castle Rock, Oregon in 1959. Both the movie and the book begin in the tree house in the backyard. Through out the story and the book they are walking in through the woods since they are looking for Ray. However, the end of the story is different. In Stand By Me it ends with Gordie as an adult finishing writing the story and going outside with his son. In The Body it ends with Gordie seeing Ace and looking out at Castle Rock.
THEME
The theme in both Stand by me and The Body are very similiar. It is about friendship and sticking together throughout hardships. The boys all had problems that they had to deal with but they all came together to work through them. The boys learned how to trust eachother and depend on one another. "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve." They all also are very mature for their age and stand up for what they beleive.
