Lisa Genova's Still Alice

1549 Words7 Pages
The tragedy of Alzheimer’s can be delivered to an audience in different ways. The novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova, published in 2010, as well as the movie Still Alice, directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, released in 2014, both show the audience each character’s personalities and conflicts, as well as how they might be affected by certain themes and the setting of the story. However, the novel presents the reader a better view of Alice’s and her family’s life through the characters’ thoughts and feelings towards certain issues, while in the filmed version of Still Alice, the audience can only infer the impacts on a character after seeing scenes that may or may not reveal their feelings. The characters’ appearances in the novel…show more content…
The novel goes into more detail with Alice’s thoughts, therefore revealing her views on her Alzheimer’s and how she feels in her relationship with John. These are the two most important and most repeated conflicts Alice experiences when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The conflict between Alice and herself is repeated many times throughout the story. She knows that her Alzheimer’s disease affects her relationships with other people, so she tries to tell them that she will always love them. Alice is scared of her future self because of this, and she does not want to live to the point where her loved ones have to experience this, which is why she creates the “Butterfly folder” that lets her know when to end her life. Her other major conflict in the novel is with John. In the movie, John is more supportive of Alice’s Alzheimer’s because some scenes that showed his struggle were deleted from the movie. For example, in the novel, when John sees Alice taking her pills or struggling to get dressed because she forgot how to put on her clothes, he avoids her or is embarrassed. Unlike the movie, the novel clearly expresses the conflict between John and Alice, because Alice already feels like John is having a hard time…show more content…
In the story, John wants to move away to start at a new job. The novel and movie describe different home and workplaces. In the novel, Alice and John live in Cambridge, and John’s new job offer requires them to New York City. In the movie, they live in New York City, and John wants to move to Minnesota for his new job instead of New York City. This impacts the story, because New York City is often seen as chaotic and busy city, where one can easily get lost. Even though moving to Minnesota would be hard for Alice because of her Alzheimer’s disease, moving to New York City would make it even harder, because it is such a big city. By changing the new location to Minnesota, the directors take away from John’s unconcernedness about Alice’s well-being in their home. The novel setting portrays what a big change moving would be in a way that also lets the reader know how serious Alzheimer’s disease is and that it makes certain situations more complicated than they would be for someone who is not suffering from it. The novel gets this point across better than the movie, because it would be harder for Alice to live and deal with her Alzheimer’s in New York City than in
Show More
Related

  • Lisa Genova's Novel, Still Alice

    1001 Words  | 5 Pages

    Still Alice follows a story of a tragedy that tests family and relationships in general. The novel makes people uncomfortable due to the realness of what will truly happen if you get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. This novel has some fantastic elements such as heart-wrenching plot lines, real and extraordinary characters and obviously, the element of surprise. Still Alice was written by Lisa Genova who’s never actually had to deal with a case of Alzheimer’s but, by the way she wrote it, it really made

    Read More

More about Lisa Genova's Still Alice

Open Document