“The Body” and “Stand by Me”

“The Body” and “Stand by Me”

Introduction

Stephen King wrote a short story titled “The Body” which was published in 1982 in “Different Seasons”. A film inspired by this short story was directed in 1986 by Rob Reiner. “Stand by Me” was the title of the film related to the “The Body”. However, film did not perfectly follow the novella in terms of character and action. There are some differences in film and novella which is further identified and explained.

Discussion

The Body

The plot of the story begins with imaginary town of Castle Rock, Maine during summer 1960. There are four friends in the story named Gordie, Teddy, Chris and Vern; they decided to get out in search of the body. They told their families that they going for camping. As they belonged to the dysfunctional and abusive families, they share their stories with each other about harshness of their life. It is notable that story is written first person view.

However, the story begins when Vern informs his friends that he listened about the body of Ray from his elder brother conversation with his friend. Ray Brower belongs from a neighboring town named Chamberlain which was 40 miles away from Castle Rock. Ray was missing along with his mother's buckets while he went to pick blueberries. All four friends decided to get fame by finding the corpse of Ray.

They all walked along railroad tracks towards the supposed location of the corpse. On the way to their journey, there was a town dump which they trespassed and was chased by a dog named Chopper who belongs to trash man Milo Pressman. Milo knows Teddy's father and he insults him to make Teddy angry. After that scene, they all were crossing the bridge and while Gordie and Vern were on the bridge when train approaches. Both Teddy and Vern were run over by approaching train. When they where resting Chris predicts that Gordie will be a famous writer one day and would probably write about them too.

They finally find the body of the Ray, but in the mean time they were encountered by a group of bullies. Bullies were confused and started arguing them, and then Chris pulled out his father's gun he took from home and fires in the air and threatens the leader of the bullies Ace. The leader of the bullies feels the seriousness and leaves the spot. After finding the body they feel that it has nothing to do with body and comes back home.

The older boys give an anonymous tip to authorities about the body and they found it. However, after few days of disagreement Ace and Fuzzy beats Gordie and his friends. However, they refused to identify attackers in front of authority and that ended up with nothing.

Then story goes into rapid pace and Gordie describes next few year about how his friends are separated. In the last two chapters Gordie describes his friend's fate. Ass none of his friend went through adulthood; ...