The Major in the book feels more like a symbol of the system while the movie major feels more like an actual person.
As a result it was both good and had its downs
In the book the Major isn’t really a major character no pun intended, throughout he occasionally appears and gives tiny speeches, but aside from the reveal of him being Stebbins father there isn’t much else to say about him and he doesn’t die.
The movie Major is given a more expanded role in the beginning he has a whole monologue speech to the boys and appears more often after Curley dies and tells the boys to keep walking as tribute for him and some other appearances the part where Garraty tells him to shut up and the Major hypes him up was also made for the movie that never happened in the book. The biggest departure tho was the Major killing Garratys dad in front of him this resulting in Garraty joining the walk to get revenge on the Major.
In the book this never happened at all in fact Garraty doesn’t even see or know if his father died the squads took him and that was the end of the story the major was not involved and because of this it makes the major feel more like a traditional villain and his death my McVries in the end only enforces that.
If you ask me while I liked the additional scenes of the major I still don’t know how to feel about him killing Garratys dad while it did provide more motive for him to join the walk to me it felt slightly forced in for the sake of having the major be more antagonistic his presence in the book was effective because the major doesn’t do anything that makes the reader hate him. The Major is just someone in the system who enforces it.
Overall what do you think?