This film was a Vivid and candid look at terminal illness. Are we really any further along than a century ago when it comes to our end of days care of being terminally ill? I think not. When the Doctor describes the end of days to John Wayne it got me thinking that we are really no further along than what we were over a century ago! All these so called medical advances and it's no further along we die the same.
shareYep....give me a syringe full of morphine and I'll call it a day-if ever faced with terminal cancer
shareWell, we're never told what kind of cancer Books has; the doctor himself may not have been sure. Of course, nowadays Books might elect to undergo chemo, he might not. Or some kind of homeopathic treatment. He most certainly would be able to prolong his life past six weeks, I think. Assuming he would want to.
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?
The novel says what Books has...prostate and rectal cancer. Today's medicine would have caught it before it became terminal. But in the early 1900s, he's under a death sentence with six weeks more to go...at best.
shareI'm nearly done reading the novel and the descriptions of his pain are pretty harrowing.
shareIn the novel, Books' cancer is further along than it is in the movie. As the post above says, the novel's description of Books' pain is "pretty harrowing." In the movie, Books having problems getting out of the tub, and Bond having to pull him out, is almost comical; but in the novel "harrowing" is indeed the word.
I understand Wayne was the one who wanted Books to be in an earlier stage of the cancer. This worked, given that Wayne's bulk in the movie was a far cry from the wasted-away, almost skeletonic Books of the novel. I read the book when it first came out, before it was announced there would be a film version starring John Wayne; and I imagined Books being played by Lee Marvin or James Coburn, two much leaner actors. The book is generally darker than the movie (in, for example, the character of Gillom in the novel).