Comparison of Martin Scorsese's On-screen adaptation and Edith Essay

Comparison of Martin Scorsese's On-screen adaptation and Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence - Essay Example The partners are thrown into a depth of intimacy no one can imagine who has not experienced it. Thesis The film treats the theme of innocence as a minor one while the novel treats innocence as core of moral values and social traditions. Both film and novel concentrates on the theme of marriage and its relation to innocence and moral values. Marriage is dangerous precisely because it can release and feed as many urges as it satisfies — one reason, perhaps, that divorce is rarely the simple matter it promises to be. theme are governed by the strong sense - common to many writers at the time - that one must be sacrificed to the other, that art can only be bought at the price of life. Like the novel, the film directors saw art as at once the extinction and the glory of existence. Wharton depicts Newland’s marriage as: Of course such a marriage was only what Newland was entitled to; but young men are so foolish and incalculable--and some women so ensnaring and unscrupulous--that it was nothing short of a miracle to see ones only son safe past the Siren Isle and in the haven of a blameless domesticity (Wharton 22). Martin Scorsese creates vivid and bright image of the main characters and follows Wharton’s feelings and passion related to innocence. In both works, the central figure in The Age of Innocence is Newland Archer. Like Lily Bart, Archer is by no means altogether likeable or admirable - and it is one of Whartons greatest strengths that she makes us respond to such characters by presenting them with a sort of luminous completeness. Wharton describes his family: "Ah, how your grandfather Archer loved a good dinner, my dear Newland!" he said, his eyes on the portrait of a plump full-chested young man in a stock and a blue coat, with a view of a white-columned country-house behind him (Wharton 17). Fundamentally amiable, Archer is also snobbish, vain, lazy and at times almost fatuous. If the coincidence of names with