Blog Post 7

"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick was a befitting name for this short story considering the protagonist, Douglas Quail, in retrospect paid the Rekal Incorporation to ultimately remember the erased part of his life when he was just supposed to implant a fake memory that wasn't actually so imaginary. I just thought that the irony of it was funny (I literally laughed out loud reading the title of the book again after I finished the story; it still makes me chuckle actually). The adaptation, the movie Total Recall had a lot of similarities (as it should be expected because it's an adaptation), and it had it differences. The first main difference, despite the evident name change of Doug Quaid (from Total Recall) to Douglas Quail (from "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"), the book wasn't as gruesome as the movie, and had less complexity and action scenes as the movie. For example, though in both stories the two officers tried to kill Quaid/Quail, the book only depicted Quail injuring the officer, while the movie depicted Quaid killing the cops and their troops practically immediate. Also, another difference was the moment of realization that Quaid/Quail realized that was an assassin who went Mars. When he was in the cab, in the story, he found the ReKal Incorporated card in his coat pocket which him to his questioning and propelled the story to keep going. In the movie, he was randomly attacked by the officers for spilling the beans about his mission on mars. This brings the adaptation to another difference. The wife's reaction in the story was completely different. I really don't know if Kirsten was a part of the Interplan set up; however, maybe she was just in denial at the accusations Quail made that he went to Mars and ended up leaving him because of his preposterous allegations or maybe she was in on it the entire time.  In the movie, Quaid's wife, Lori, was a part of the gimmick the entire time and once she realized that Quaid's memories came back and she attacked him, she was forced to tell Quaid what was actually going on. So in this sense, the movie was more personal and deceitful and action-packed extra drama while the book lacked as much action and tension within the marriage. I am not negating the idea that the book had no tension at all within the marriage at all; it was just minimized while the movie maximized the traumatic experience. Although the book and the movie did have their differences, and the book  left out some aspects of the movie decided to juice up (or filler out), the adaptation remained similar in the fact that a man finds out that his reality was never a reality and his dream ultimately was his reality. 

Update:

Oh my goodness. I watched this movie so much that everything I said was almost true except the fact that fact that the movie wasn't the original.(I fixed it though) I am mortified and kind of embarrassed by my silly mistake but hey, you live and you learn.Usually the movie is the adaptation of the book, like always so I don't know where my mind was for that. I guess since I watched that movie so many times and didn't even think twice to look and see when the book was published I made the mistake. Anyhow, the story remain pretty consistent in both the book and the movie adaptation with some differences of course.