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Analysis Of AinT No Rest For The Wicked

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Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” is a song by Cage the Elephant, and released as a single on June 16, 2008, but released in 2009 on the album Cage the Elephant . This song was written in the middle of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 in the United States and is heavily influenced by the economic issues during that time period. Matthew Schultz, a member of the band, told an interviewer about how he came up with the song and what inspired him to write it. Schultz explained how he was working in construction at the time he wrote the song, and how he asked a drug dealer why he did not stop doing drugs and selling them, to which he replied, “There ain’t no rest for the wicked” (“Cage the Elephant”) and that he has to work without rest in order to earn money, even if it meant that he could be arrested. “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” is a first person narrative and has a motif of events that reference Marxist criticism because it focuses on the idea that society is greatly impacted by the state of the economy and that people are willing to commit immoral acts to make a living. In the first verse of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked”, a scene is set where the narrator is walking down the street when he is confronted by a prostitute who offers her services to him if he “pay[s] the right price” (Cage the Elephant, line 10). When asked why she is selling her body to complete strangers, the prostitute explains how “Money

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