COMPARE CONTRAST THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA AND GOETHE'S FAUSTUS Research Paper

COMPARE CONTRAST THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA AND GOETHE'S FAUSTUS - Research Paper Example No contemporary song better illustrates the persistence of the â€Å"Devil as fiddler† than the 1979 country-rock hit â€Å"The Devil Went Down to Georgia† by the Charlie Daniels Band. The Devil encounters a young man â€Å"who plays the fiddle hot† and challenges him to a musical duel, the outcome of which is unexpected: After centuries of bargaining, humankind has finally produced a musician whose natural skills surpass the Devil’s. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences between Goethe’s Faust and Charlie Daniels’s The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It is the contention of this paper that the song has largely adapted the ‘devil wager’ theme while making its subject more straightforward than the complex Faust play. The tune is made up of two instrumental pauses ushered by Charlie Daniels himself on fiddle; every break symbolizes the performance of one of the competitors. The song of the devil has no actual, genuine tune, but an eerie melody that Daniels attained by overdubbing some parts of his own performance with the fiddle. Johnny performs a rendition of the old song called Fire on the Mountain. His melody is presented in the song through the below puzzling verses (Daniels 10): Charlie Daniels, in creating this song, was obviously inspired by folk stories about the demon taking part in fiddling competitions, which have been popular in the U.S. for more than a century. Charles M. Skinner documented such a story, narrated by a Black fiddler called Joost in New York, perhaps in the middle of the 19th century. Similar to numerous devil and ghost tales, in the story of Skinner the demon is chased off by the devotion of Joost in performing a hymn, and by the coming of dawn (Bendix & Hasan-Rokem 128). Nevertheless, in other renditions of the story, the demon is easily conquered by grander musicianship. Still in relation to The Devil Went Down to Georgia, consider, for instance, a rendition obtained by Herbert

Unit9englassignm Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Unit9englassignm - Essay Example Initially not intended to house non-violent criminal offenders, current trends indicate that youths convicted of crimes, even very minor offenses, are being increasingly committed to detention centers in preference to the implementation of less stringent methods of punishment and rehabilitation (Foley, 2001). However, the large-scale use of detention centers as the sole method of deterring youth crime is insufficient to the purpose as it increases the familiarity and acceptance of criminal attitudes and behaviors, has a negative impact on the mental condition of detainees, and hinders both education and the healthy development of acceptable social behaviors. The detention of minors who have exhibited criminal tendencies and/or engaged in illegal activities within this type of large, secure holding facility does not result in a direct, significant level of discouragement to future crime. On the contrary, communal youth housing practices used in such detention facilities has been proven to create an atmosphere which aggravates the rate of recidivism among minors. Studies based on information compiled from multiple states suggest that as many as 60 percent of young offenders sentenced to time in a juvenile detention center have later been required to return, often to the same facility, following the commission of new criminal offense(s) (Sander, Sharkey, Tanigawa, and Mauseth, 2010). Such an excessively high rate of recidivism does little to support the notion of rehabilitation through detention. Though many factors have been blamed for the high rate of recidivist practices among delinquent youths, one influential element of this recurring criminality is the reinforcement of negative behaviors and attitudes within detention facilities themselves. Statistics concerning a seeming reduction in youth crime rates fail to consider this