“The Birds”, written by Daphne du Maurer, is a short story that will be compared with the movie The Night of the Living Dead. There were many differences between the two. Diversities such as themes, plot, setting, characters, endings and any changes. In The Night of Living Dead, There was radiation on one of Venus’s atel lites and it has turned regular people into zombies. Anyone who was not affected by it could be eaten by the zombies and they themselves will soon turn in to them. The main character is Ben, and the antagonists are Mr.
Cooper as well as the zombies. In “The Birds”, the protagonist is Nat Hocken and he and his family are trying to fight off thousands of birds attacking people as well as their property. It has been said that the birds have changed because of the weather, or the Arctic Circle. “The Birds” other characters are Mr.
and Mrs. Trigg. They died because the family did not listen to Nat Hocken, the main character. Nat is the smart one in this story.
He has a lot of experience and received even more in World War II. Nat boards up the house and tries to calm his family down. They try to ride it out as the birds are attacking the house, trying to get in. Nat gathers supplies from the late neighbors house. The short story ends with Nat smoking the last cigarette in the pack. In addition to the said characters in The Night of the Living Dead, some others were Mrs.
Cooper, Mrs. Cooper’s daughter, Judy, Tom, Barbara and John. In the beginning of the movie, John dies and later on becomes a monster. Barbara is now traumatized and can barely do anything. Tom and Judy die because Judy is stubborn and brings Tom to his death with her. Mr.
and Mrs. Cooper die because they are disobedient and trap themselves in the basement with their infected daughter who kills them, and is later killed by Ben. Ben also kills Mr. and Mrs. Cooper just after they became zombies. Barbara died because John grabbed her out of the house and they ate her.
Ben wakes up the next morning to be shot in the head by a killing party, sent out to exterminate the zombies. As for the comparability of the two, the plot and more are of some liking. Mr. and Mrs.
Trigg died for the reason of not listening just as Judy, Tom, and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper did. At one point in both the movie and the short story, the main characters smoked a cigarette, as if it would be their last. War was also a comparison. World War II in “The Birds” was like the air raids and the massive amount of the enemy.
The mass amount of birds flew in the sky hitting the houses like kamikaze pilots and other planes on a mission. In the war of Vietnam, the army just shot anyone who looked like they were Vietnamese. This was like how the killing party just shot Ben without even checking if he was a zombie or not. The main idea of the two was that the main characters were trapped by a massive amount of the enemy and had to fight to survive. The main characters both hammered at the windows and doors.
Ben and Nat reassured everybody. The characters also trusted and depended on the radio. The radio compared the reasons of these unusual happenings to science. The characters were all trapped in a house all boarded up. In both the movie and the short story, the telephones were dead.
The exact location of the two was not the same but the country setting was. There were several events of conflict and foreshadowing. The endings of the movie and the short story were very different and bizarre. In The Night of the Living Dead, Ben dies and for “The Birds” the author leaves the reader with Nat smoking the last cigarette in the pack. In the movie, all the zombies are destroyed but in the short story, the birds are still attacking. Even though the ending was not told, I think that Nat will die in the end because the birds will get through and kill him and his family.
These were some explanations why the movie and the short story are not really that different.