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hold little relevance. It is important to mention that they both lived in a timeframe of great

wars and had a role in them as well. Their social backgrounds are essentially the same since

they both come from prominent families. Finchers Benjamin is the son of a successful button

maker while Fitzgeralds is the child born into a family that held an enviable position, both

social and financial, in Antebellum Baltimore .However, the setting is not as similar as it

would seem due to the fact that in the movie adaptation, Benjamin is adopted into a

retirement home by a young black woman which deprives him of the luxury of social security

while growing up. Even though Fitzgeralds Benjamin is accepted (barely) by his well off

parents he is not accepted by society because unlike his counterpart he is born as an old man

and not as an old man trapped in a babys form. The retirement home actually provides a

shelter for Benjamin and allows him to blend in.

As stated earlier, these two stories do have a common concept but somewhat differ

thematically. Fitzgerald emphasizes the struggle for acceptance and necessity to adopt of

such a peculiar individual and does so while satirically describing events in Benjamins life

like his fathers idea to call him Methuselah when he first met Benjamin. He also ridicules

society and its inability to bend the norms. Fitzgerald conveys a message that even a case of

reverse aging does not lessen the fact that all people go through the more or less difficult

stages of life and cope accordingly. Fincher on the other hand deals more with the subjects of

growing up, learning, compassion, faith and accepting mortality. His Benjamin apart from his

father abandoning him doesnt have to deal as much with mistreatment and wrestles with his

own existence and unparallel life instead. Fincher is not solely centered on Benjamins life

and pays more attention to the growth of other characters as well which is important to

mention because being intertwined with such a fantastic persona makes them face their own

mortality, especially in the case of Benjamins wife Daisy. Death is Finchers main motif,

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from the retirement home Benjamin was accepted in, his father and stepmother dying, the

death of his tugboat crew to his own demise as an infant in the grasp of his beloved wife.

Finally it can be said that both achieved a bewildering effect and even though their

setting, theme and characters are different they both managed to express the inevitability of

not only death but existing and the importance of acceptance. The movie certainly has more

depth as more details are introduced but then again it is a love story whereas the tale is more

realistic in terms of a larger set of emotions shown by Benjamin Button.