Read the short stories "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner and "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway.  Compare them.  What differences do you notice in the ways the stories are told?  What differences are there in setting? in characterization? in narrator? in chronology? in plot?  What effects do these differences have on the way we respond to the stories?  How do these authors vary in the way they approach the stories they're telling?  Try to find as many differences as you can between the stories and try to figure out how these features you've located affect your reaction to the stories.  What differences would a filmmaker have to keep in mind filming these two stories?
 

Of the two film versions you've just seen of short stories by Faulkner and Hemingway, which film do you think best captured the plot of the story it was based on? which best captured the mood or the tone?  which best captured the characters or the conflict between the characters?  which would you say would be sufficient as a faithful adaptation of the story (so faithful, say, that a viewer might feel seeing the film is the same as reading the story)?  Try to explain what in the films made you react to the adaptations in the ways you have.  Which of the two writers do you think adapts more easily to cinematic story-telling?  Why?
 
 

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