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7/31/2019 Filip KrajnoviIFL
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7/31/2019 Filip KrajnoviIFL
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hold little relevance. It is important to mention that they both lived in a timeframe of great
wars and had a role in them as well. Their social backgrounds are essentially the same since
they both come from prominent families. Finchers Benjamin is the son of a successful button
maker while Fitzgeralds is the child born into a family that held an enviable position, both
social and financial, in Antebellum Baltimore .However, the setting is not as similar as it
would seem due to the fact that in the movie adaptation, Benjamin is adopted into a
retirement home by a young black woman which deprives him of the luxury of social security
while growing up. Even though Fitzgeralds Benjamin is accepted (barely) by his well off
parents he is not accepted by society because unlike his counterpart he is born as an old man
and not as an old man trapped in a babys form. The retirement home actually provides a
shelter for Benjamin and allows him to blend in.
As stated earlier, these two stories do have a common concept but somewhat differ
thematically. Fitzgerald emphasizes the struggle for acceptance and necessity to adopt of
such a peculiar individual and does so while satirically describing events in Benjamins life
like his fathers idea to call him Methuselah when he first met Benjamin. He also ridicules
society and its inability to bend the norms. Fitzgerald conveys a message that even a case of
reverse aging does not lessen the fact that all people go through the more or less difficult
stages of life and cope accordingly. Fincher on the other hand deals more with the subjects of
growing up, learning, compassion, faith and accepting mortality. His Benjamin apart from his
father abandoning him doesnt have to deal as much with mistreatment and wrestles with his
own existence and unparallel life instead. Fincher is not solely centered on Benjamins life
and pays more attention to the growth of other characters as well which is important to
mention because being intertwined with such a fantastic persona makes them face their own
mortality, especially in the case of Benjamins wife Daisy. Death is Finchers main motif,
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from the retirement home Benjamin was accepted in, his father and stepmother dying, the
death of his tugboat crew to his own demise as an infant in the grasp of his beloved wife.
Finally it can be said that both achieved a bewildering effect and even though their
setting, theme and characters are different they both managed to express the inevitability of
not only death but existing and the importance of acceptance. The movie certainly has more
depth as more details are introduced but then again it is a love story whereas the tale is more
realistic in terms of a larger set of emotions shown by Benjamin Button.