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Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Essay

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In my opinion, a book is always a better choice for entertainment then a movie. Usually, when a book is adapted into a movie; the movie always seems to omit scenes and details mentioned in the book. This is the same with Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; a novel that tells a story surrounding a man named Socrates Fortlow. However, while the movie version of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned follows the same concept as the book there are substantial differences in terms of events, details, and chronological order. The first major difference between the movie and the book is how quickly the movie reveals some of the flaws of the main character Socrates Fortlow. In fact the movie starts with Socrates appearing …show more content…

Realizing that they were seen, Darryl and his friends run and the boy inevitably follows. Once in the clear, Darryl and his friends discuss what they are going to do next. All the while, the boy is follows pleading for permission to go with them. Darryl and his friends respond to the boy’s request by telling him to go home. When he won’t leave them alone, Darryl and his friends become aggravated, and Darryl turns around and knifes the boy to death. After realizing the boy is dead, Darryl and his friends leave and never tell anyone what happened. Later on in the book, Darryl proceeds to tell Socrates that he is haunted in his dreams by the retarded boy all the time. However, in the movie this same plot has a very different twist. In the movie, the retarded boy, whose name is Felix, killed by a young boy by the name of Phillip who threatens to kill anyone who tells. While some of the events are not the same, a majority of the differences are tiny details. For example, in the book Socrates has a photo of Theresa, his ex-girlfriend, hanging in his kitchen by the window. In the picture, Theresa is wearing a red dress but in the movie she is in a white dress. The book also tells the reader that Socrates spent twenty-seven years in prison and was released eight years ago; in the movie; he only served eighteen years and had only been out for ten months. These are just some of the differences between the book and the movie.

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