Teacher: Tsang Chi Man

Book’s title:

Author: , Andrew Hodges

Publisher: Scholastic

Sharing:

First, I thank my daughter, Jade. She wants to share this book review to my students. She believes my students may either read this novel or watch the film later.

The Imitation Game(1) is a film based on the book, and the Enigma code. The novel, the Imitation Game, is based on the film. I would like to compare and contrast the differences and the appearance and reality of film and the book.

The Imitation Game is about an English genius mathematician, Alan Turing, who helped Britain to break the German military code, Enigma. He has strange personalities, although he is very smart, he is not sociable so that he can’t get along well with others. All the breaking code team thought Alan is a freak. He had suggested making a machine to break the Enigma code, but his teammates didn’t agree with him. Since he is too proud of himself, he couldn’t accept anyone to suspect the ability of the machine, Christopher, which he had made. However, a new member of the breaking code team, Joan, helped Alan to communicate with his team members. Soon, they liked each other and Alan proposed to Joan. Actually, Alan is a homosexual person. After being the finance of Joan, Alan found out that he didn’t to marry Joan. After two years hard work, they finally found the key of Enigma, and successfully broke it. But they have to keep that secret so the Germans wouldn’t found out this. If the Germans found out they have broken the Enigma, they would change the setting of the . So they the code breaking team needed to chose who to rescue and who to give up. After finishing the breaking Enigma machine mission, Alan said bad words to Joan like he is a homosexual and he proposed to her because he wanted Joan to break Enigma but not loving her. The truth is Alan didn’t want Joan to stay away from Bletchley (where they did the code breaking job), since they knew a lot military top secrets, the head of the MI5 wanted to arrest them. In 1951, Alan was found out that he was a homosexual and was arrested (homosexual was illegal at that time) and Alan chose to have chemical castration. Alan Turing had commit suicide in 1954.

First of all, the novel beautifies the image of Alan Turing. It seldom describes the parts that the code breaking team teammates helped Alan. It figures Alan as a hero that did everything on his own and insisted his idea although others disagree. Also, it has deification Alan. On the other side, the film shows the more realistic Alan and the code breaking team. He was always alone since he couldn’t get on with his team members. He sometimes hurt others feelings by saying bad words to other or ignored others. But later, his team members have helped him a lot. Like Hugh (one of the team members), he had found some information for Alan. Also, when Commander Dennison wanted to destroy Christopher and fired Alan, all the team members claim that if Commander fired Alan, they would leave the code breaking team. From these, we can see the code breaking team had accepted Alan as a member of the team and helped Alan with the machine.

Furthermore, the relationship Alan with Joan in the film is better than in the novel. In the novel, Joan had seldom have interaction with Alan. On the opposite side, Joan was close with Alan in the film. In the film, Alan always share is thoughts to Joan and Joan always solve the problems and helped Alan. When Alan said some bad words that hurt Hugh’s feelings, she immediately said “I think Alan is meaning thank you.” Also, when Joan saw the medicine, made Alan very depressed and weak, she comforted him and gave him crossword puzzle (Alan loves cross puzzle). From these, we can see Joan knew a lot about Alan and Joan was very nice to Alan.

Finally, in the film, Alan had been crushing on Christopher but we didn’t know did Christopher like Alan. On the opposite side, the novel described that both Alan and Christopher kissed Alan secretly. In the film, it didn’t say anything about why Alan had sex with a man. But in the novel, it says, Alan had sex with a man because he missed Christopher a lot. From these, we can see there was lover relationship between Alan and Christopher, and Alan loved Christopher a lot.

In conclusion, both the film and the novel beautify the figure of Alan Turing. However, the film gives the readers a clearer image of the relationship between Alan and Joan. The novel gives the readers a clearer image of the relationship between Alan and Christopher.

(1) The Imitation Game is a 2014 American historical drama thriller film directed by .