Devil and Daniel webster moviebook comparison
In the movie and the short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster", written by Stephen Vincent Benet, there is illustrated the battle between the forces of good and evil. Although the story allows the reader to mentally picture the scenes and the movie does the depicting for the viewer, there are several similarities in each script. Some of these similarities are the way the characters are depicted and the final scene. There are several incongruous scenes between the short story and the way the movie unfolds. The differences are the amount of time that is spent on the character development, also there are some scenes added into the movie such as the harvest dance and the reminder of the contract. There are three main characters in this short story/movie. They are Scratch, Daniel Webster, and Jabez Stone. The actors picked for the roles fit almost perfectly to the descriptions of the characters in the short story. Scratch is described as a " soft-spoken, dark-dressed stranger...white teeth...were filed to a point". As shown in the movie the actor was also a very darkly clad man. He also had a very soft, hypnotic voice and whenever he smiled his teeth were very shiny and pointy. The
Overall the way the director decided to interpret the short story was not the same as I did while I was reading it. For the most part he tried to stick with the script, but with the scenes he tried to change they didn't seem as effective. However the scenes he decided to add and the characters he expanded on were a great choice and brought the story alive. There are even more differences between the scripts then there are similarities. The first of these is the way the characters are depicted. I already pointed out that Jabez had a bigger role in the movie and that he only had one child. His wife, her mother, the neighboring farmers and the housekeeper were also given more substantial roles in the movie. His wife, Mary, was there to dote on him and also to show her support for him after all the farmers had turned on him. Her mother and the farmers, who weren't even mentioned in the short story, were there to act as Jabez's conscious. The mother always seemed to appear after something bad happened. The farmer's were there at first to get him to join the Populist movement and the Farmer's Guild. When he refused that and took the devil's offer all he would do was gloat. They eventually turned on him, this is different in the short story because in it they were very fond of him and even wanted him to run for state senate. The housekeeper was also around a lot and for some reason after the baby is born she changes into Belle, a very
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 982
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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