Stand By Me

     Stand By Me says what "The Body" says in terms of plot.  "The Body" has a group of children that have an adventure to find a body, and Stand By Me has the same story.  The children hear from Vern that a body has been found.  They think it might be Ray Brower which in "The Body" Stephen King used the name.  At the end of Stand By Me only Chris Chambers dies where in "The Body" all of Gordon's friends die.  In the movie, Ace Merrill and his goons never beat the friends up, however in the short story they severely hurt them, especially Chris and Gordie.
     The point of view in both the movie and the short story are the same.  They are told from third person omniscient.  It is narrated by a man who is writing a book.  He is writing a book about his childhood.  Both of the narrators know what is going to happen at the end.  They both want their stories told.
     In the short story, Gordie’s big brother, Denny, is an excellent baseball player while in the film he is a football star.  In the movie, all of the people Gordie meets are mean to him until they realize he is related to Denny.  An example of this is the shop owner who attempts to put his thumb on the scale to make it weigh more. Then once he realizes Gordie is related to the football star he does not put his thumb on it.  The he takes an interest in Gordie's personal life just to talk about Denny.
     The setting is different because in the film it is set in Oregon, but the short story is set in Maine.  The book takes place in Castle Rock, Maine where most of King's stories take place and Stand By Me is set in Brownsburg, Oregon.  Other than it being set in different states the setting is the same.  The boys are walking along railroad tracks.  They also enter some small towns along the way.  They find the body in the woods off of the tracks.
     The themes are the same in both the short story and the movie.  They both tell us how much children should go back to the old days when kids would climb trees instead of playing video games all day.  If children would go adventuring they may never get an experience like that again.  They may find the body of one of their classmates. They may find a case of money.

The Body Blog

     The Body tells about a group of boys that find a body while they are adventuring.  They are unsure what to do and thus the story is about them figuring what to do. The plot takes the boys all across the county.  The plot gets the reader to sympathize with the boys because of the fact that they travel across the county.  "The tracks now bent southwest and ran through tangles of second-growth fir." They do many things throughout the story.  They enter a pie eating contest, they cross the Royal River, and they find a body.
     The Body is written in third person omniscient. The story is written as a writer who is writing this as a book.  "I was twelve going on thirteen when I saw a dead human being.  It happened in 1960, a long time ago... although sometimes it doesn't seem that long to me."  The narrator knows all that happens throughout the story.  The narrator can explain everything for the plot of the story.
     The author shows how the characters change through direct characterization.  "...Triple money on six-card-under, although Teddy was the only guy crazy enough to go for that."  "Teddy Duchamp was only about half-bright, but Vern Tessio would never be spending any of his spare time on College Bowl either.  Still his brother Billy was even dumber..."  The author also uses indirect characterization.  "Thinks they will ruin her pret-ty face."  The women is then perceived to be self-centered.
     It is set in the 1960's.  This means they don't have all the technology that we have.  They don't have cell phones, Internet, or even Ipods.  They were kids that went adventuring just to see what was out in the world.  It is set in a small town.  This means they don't have access to huge malls or skyscrapers.  They just loved gettin down and dirty.
     The theme of this short story is to get children to go exploring.  Children will never know what the world contains until they look.  They might find the body of a child who was killed.  They may find one hundred dollars.  They should always report things they find.