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SUBSTANCE INTO SHADOW I99
in the already mentioned summary at the end) yet the moral implications clearly emerge. The pattern of the novel is not set by the plot but by the boy's slow interior coming to terms with the situation. For all its surface suspense, the plot is frequently forsaken for long stretches at a time, and only Chick's internal conflicts are chronicled. The final resolution is as much the calm, comparatively harmonious state of mind with which Chick emerges, as the fact of Lucas's release. The plot resolves in parallel with the boy's doubts, but it is the latter which are at the novel's core.
This underlying current of internal conflicts, it must be stated, the adaptor has hardly attempted to convey. Where he has there are short passages where the action is aided by the boy's commentary the conflicts are drastically simplified. This, perhaps, is inevitable. But it means that the novelist's most sensitive instrument of perception has been lost.
To compensate for this the script makes more of the directly didactic portions of the novel. Even here, simplification is necessary. Significantly, the order of the last two scenes has been reversed. Faulkner describes Chick's conversation with his uncle in which they crystallize their own attitude to the Southern problem. This is followed by a scene in which Lucas comes to pay his bill : his last request for a receipt shows him as arrogantly unlikeable as ever. In the film, the two scenes are reversed. Lucas comes to the office and, after being dismissed, walks alone down the street. Chick and his uncle watch him. The uncle is reassuring : ' It will be all right. As long as some of us are willing to fight even one of us ' ; and : ' Lucas wasn't in trouble ; we were in trouble.'
A comparison of the two endings reveals two significant differences. The reversal of the scenes makes the film's ending more naively optimistic (and was probably a box-office concession). And the positive statement with which the film