BOOKS VS. MOVIES

By Maria Vincent , Grade 9, The Indian High School

One day, I asked my friend, “Did you like The Christmas Carol?” Expecting a comment on the book, my friend’s answer amazed me,“Oh yes! I liked the snowy scenery, the way the three ghosts appeared, and not to forget, Tiny Tim looked very cute.” You see, friends, with the film industry adapting world famous novels for blockbuster movies, the golden hobby of reading is slowly coming to a decline.

Books: The best solution, the best companion

Today’s generation gets pleasure from watching movies, but what I feel is that there is no real entertainment other than reading books. Books open the doors to a new world- the world of an author’s imagination of life. Books help us to widen our mental horizon and give us a creative and an innovative approach to life. Many love watching films based on popular books, which were and still continue to be world favourites. When films can give us only temporary happiness, books can fill our lives with eternal joy. The youth love watching movies based on books just because they can watch their favourite heroes and heroines on screen, look at the visual effects created and enjoy the music. This attitude has given reading ‘the back seat’ in one’s life.

But I do not mean to say that movies are worse than the books they are based on. Some movies are evergreen classics that have portrayed the story with such excellence that their respective books became more popular after the movies were released. One such example is the movie, Gone with the Wind,based on Margaret Mitchell’s classic work.

But watching movies need not help us to know clearly, the message the story conveys to us. When we are lost in the artificial movie world, we often overlook the real theme of the story. However, the case is different with books. Reading books give us a clear idea about what the story is. Reading also helps us to fashion our vocabulary with different kinds of words, phrases, idioms and more. Movies may show us the setting of the story, but only through books will we get a complete knowledge about different people, different places, different kinds of lifestyles and also about the mindset of different people. Books help us academically, especially when they put forward a real-life concept that we find it difficult to forget them. We may not be able to get to watch movies wherever we go, but books have held out their arms to us, waiting to be loved.

So, don’t you think that books are better than movies?