The Body vs. Stand By Me

Released in 1986, “Stand By Me” can now be found on Netflix for your viewing pleasure.

The first time I watched “Stand By Me” was in my high school film class. The same class I first watched “The Shawshank Redeption” in. Little did I know that both movies were based on Stephen King novellas published in the same book, “Different Seasons”.

“Different Seasons” contains four Stephen King novellas, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, “Apt Pupil”, “The Body” and “The Breathing Method”.

I began reading “The Body” this semester as a suggestion from my cousin. After reading “Bag of Bones” I was itching for another Stephen King novel and began asking around for suggestions. When my cousin Kathy mentioned “Stand By Me” I was completely surprised. The heartfelt coming-of-age movie was based on a Stephen King novel? I immediately headed to the library to check it out.

[Spoiler Alert]

I hadn’t seen “Stand By Me” in years, so when I began reading “The Body” I only had a faint recollection of the story. I remembered the basics: Four twelve year old boys go off in search of the body of a boy their age who had recently disappeared somewhere along the train tracks in the woods after one of them, Vern, heard his mean older brother talking about how he had found the dead boy’s body. In my memory it was an adventure story. Yes, all the boys had some troubles, but that wasn’t the focus, the focus was on friendship and how much life changes as you grow up.

While “Stand By Me” is a great film, “The Body” is an even better book. While the premise of both stories is almost identical, there is just so much more to “The Body”. You related to the boys and feel more compassion, especially for Gordie and Chris. The flashes back and forth from present-day Gordon Lachance to twelve-year-old Gordie make you think of your own childhood, the friends you grew away from, and how there are so many things in life you can never predict.

One of my favorite parts of the novel that is a bit overlooked in the movie adaptation is when Gordie sees the deer on the train tracks. There is something extremely pure about that moment in the book, and the thoughts that it stirs up in adult-Lachance are some of the most powerful lines in the book.

“The most important things are the hardest to day, because words diminish them. It’s hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.”

This statement, as well as many other ideas and questions King brings up within the pages of “The Body” are what make it such a great read. Throughout the book, you can’t help but think about the way certain actions can affect the rest of your life.

“And if small events really do echo up larger and larger through time, yes, maybe if we had done the simple thing and simply hitched into Harlow, they would still be alive today”

Both “The Body” and “Stand By Me” are memorable works that are worth visiting, or revisiting. The biggest difference in the two is the depth that can be reached in a book, that most films just can’t capture. Also, there are instances within “Stand By Me” where Gordie and Chris’s roles are reversed, which alters their characters and how you think of them. Most importantly, “Stand By Me” excludes the fact that Gordie was the only one to live into his thirties. While “Stand By Me” has Vern and Teddy grow up to live ordinary lives, “The Body” does not. The deaths of Vern, Teddy, and Chris are greatly foreshadowed in “The Body”, and the guilt and confusion Gordie still feels as an adult play a big role in the book. Throughout the story he questions events that happened during their trip to find Ray Brower’s body and if they might be the reason that he is still alive while the other boys are not.

Throughout “The Body”, I felt as if I was reading about Stephen King’s own life. Maybe it was because Gordie grew up to become a writer, or because there was just something so incredibly honest about the book. But the whole time I was reading, I kept wondering if King wrote the book, at least partially, in memory of his own childhood. Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I headed to Google to find an answer.

In an interview with AMC TV, King explains “There’s a lot of stuff in ‘The Body’ that’s just simply history that’s been tarted up a little bit.” King grew up in Portland, Maine and witnessed another young boy being hit and killed by a train at age four. Gordie’s writing career also mimicked that of King’s, who had stories published in his school paper at age seven. King thought about writing “The Body” for a long time, but the story took its time forming:

“Nothing came and nothing came, and when you do when nothing comes is, you don’t push. You just put it aside… The most important things are the hardest to say. You can’t talk about them because once you start, they tarnish.”

“The Body” is very different from most Stephen King novels I know of, but it is a great piece of writing and shows just what a talented and diverse writer King is. Reading “The Body” immediately made me want to read the rest of the stories within “Different Seasons”, as well as more of King’s work.

Next up on my Stephen King reading list: “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”.