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Freedom Writers Diary

In: English and Literature

Submitted By eagleman
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In the book, The Freedom Writers Diary, some things were not added into the movie. They changed the perspective, so instead of the students telling the story and the teacher secondary, like in the book, the teacher (Ms. Gruwell) tells the story, and the students are secondary. Also, the entries are worse and more horrifying than in the movie, like abuse, drugs, peer pressure, illness, and violence.

I think that these changes, in the book version to the movie version, were to have a 3rd person point of view story of the kids, and not a 1st person point of view like in the book. When this story is in 3rd person point of view, we learn the struggle for Ms. Gruwell and the hardships on the students.

In the movie, the screenplay writers added in a side story about Erin Gruwell and her husband. I believe that they did this because while the students are out on the streets with their gangs or friends getting in trouble or helping themselves getting better, we want to see how Ms. Gruwell is reacting to the students and what her family thinks of them. It shows what she thinks, wants, plans, and does to help the students and how passionate and caring she is aslo.

After seeing the movie, some characters were like how I pictured them from the book, and others were way off. Eva was sort of how I pictured her, but not all of her. Her attitude, her hair, and what she wore is what I pictured of her, but she doesn’t seem like a “gangster”. I also pictured Marcus to look poorer, since his mom kicked him out, and he was bold and ready for anybody that disrespected him. Marcus was a little big, but I thought he would’ve been tougher mentally and physically.

I prefer the book version of the lives of the students than of the movie version. The movie version only covered some of the students, skimmed over a little, and the rest weren’t mentioned. In the book, we learned more about the students’ lives, and mentioned almost all of them. The book version was better over all because that’s what the story’s about, how a teacher changed gangsters into educated young adults, and the movie showed that, it’s just that the book was about all of the students. Another thing that the movie only showed a little bit of but the book had was different perspectives, different attitudes, and different lifestyles of the students.

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