Les Femmes: Portrayal of Women in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress

The entire life of a character, in both novel and film, is at the mercy of the one who creates them. The job of a film adaptation is to realize and shape the characters of the original work on-screen in a believable, enjoyable, and successful way. In the novels The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum,  The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress, the main female characters, Katharina Blum, Vivian Rutledge, and Daphne Monet, respectively, are each depicted in a specific way by the authors and all are significantly reshaped in their film counterparts. Through each character change in both development and personality of these female characters, the themes from novel to adaptation are diluted.

Are You There God? It’s Me, John: Symbolism and Metaphor in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet #14

The metaphysical poets of seventeenth century England are characterized by their use of conceit, or extended metaphor, and their common themes of love, religion, and death. John Donne is considered by many to be one of the most predominant figures of the metaphysical poetry movement. He wrote in many different forms and styles over the course of his life, but all of his works flow with his signature sensual style. Even after he became a cleric for the Church of England, his religious poetry and prose still included puns, paradoxes, and unlikely metaphors. The Holy Sonnet #14, alternatively titled “Batter my heart” is one of Donne’s most famous sonnets. Through conceit and form, Donne successfully executes an unlikely comparison between religious or holy love and common, earthly love and the violent metaphors within the sonnet ultimately comment on the extreme need for willpower in faith.

In The End: Dysfunctional Relationships and Film Endings in Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer, and Brokeback Mountain

The tragedy is typically characterized as a form of drama that involves human suffering, fatal flaws, and death. The plays Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer and the short story “Brokeback Mountain” all include tragic elements that mostly revolve around the dysfunctional relationships portrayed in each work. Their film adaptations, which all share the same name, have changed the endings of the works in different ways, but each ending seems to be more positive than their written counterparts. I want to argue that by changing the dynamic of particular relationships in the film adaptations, the endings are also affected in positive ways.