s Emma (directed by Diarmud Lawrence), E. M. Forster’s A Room With A View (directed by James Ivory), and Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence (directed by Martin Scorsese). The analysis will primarily focus on how the film directors have either remained faithful to the tone and voice of the original sources, or how they have diminished the tone and voice of the originals.
Affliction, the novel, is a tale of family dysfunction wherein only the narrator, he argues, has been able to escape the “affliction” of violence visited upon his family by their father. The story depicts the dysfunctional family life of the Whitehouse’s, a small town New Hampshire family ripped apart and detached from each other and others because of the wounds they still carry from the abuses of their alcoholic and tyrannical father. The book could just as easily be called ACA’s, or adult children of alcoholics. The main character of the novel is the narrator Rolfe Whitehouse, who describes the deer hunting season wherein his brother, Wade, kills his abusive father and murders a young police officer, Jack, he suspects is guilty of murdering an area union boss. It is basically Wade’s story Rolfe tells, but in the novel his is the primary voice we are privy to. In the film, however, Rolfe does not appear until nearly the second hour of the two-hour film, his narration being replaced by visual imagery and action in the film. This does not serve to diminish the voice and tone of the novel because in both works, it is Wade’s story we follow. Both film and novel open with the narration of Rolfe as he states, “This is the story of my older brother’s strange criminal behavior and his disappearance” (Banks 1).
His older brother, Wade Whitehouse, in no way escapes the affliction of violence visited upon him by his abusive and cruel father, Glen. Wade has little going for him. He has taken to his father’s cruel and drinking ways and l...