The
film omits certain details from the short story, although otherwise it is a mostly faithful
adaptation.
The story begins with the image of the entire town attending 's
funeral more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. The film begins with a mortician
working on Emily's body.
While the short story can get away summarizing
Emily's youth, the film illustrates it with specific incidents: her father chasing away suitors
or her first meeting withBaron (which is never depicted in Faulkner's story).
Emily's character is also softened a bit in the film: less imperious than her short
story counterpart. For one thing, the film eliminates Emily's insistence that she does not need
to pay taxes due to the influence of Colonel Satoris.
She also hesitates when
lying about needing to buy the poison to kill Homer. Whensays she is required to say what she
wants to use the arsenic for, Emily looks away out of nerves yet still receives the arsenic
despite her shady behavior. In the short story, this is not the case:
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her
face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what
you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye,
until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.
Despite these changes, the story is mostly faithful to the text to
the letter, though not necessarily always the spirit. The clash between the Old and New South is
excised almost entirely from the movie version.
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