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Damnation In 'The Devil And Tom Walker And The Black Cat'

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Damnation and Salvation are two actions, which define a person’s mortal soul’s standing. Both are on opposite sides of the spectrum, which involve either turning away from, or embracing God. Instances of protagonists rejecting God can be found in the short stories, The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving, The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe, and, The Storm by Kate Chopin. All three stories show examples of people following their afflictions, which lead them toward damnation rather than salvation. In, The Devil and Tom Walker, by Washington Irving, the protagonist, Tom is lead into damnation by the Devil himself. Tom knew when he asked for riches that, “there was one condition” (Irving 9) that was needed to make a deal with the Devil. …show more content…

In this instance, it is clear that the protagonist is damned. By hanging and maiming animals, then later having his house burned down, the protagonist is shown to not be getting away with his sins. The burned house was found to have a burn mark of “a rope about [a cat’s] neck” (Poe 61), showing the reader that the man did one “get one over on God” and that God did truly see that that man is sinning and is not approved of. Following the omen from God, the man reflects on his mistakes and has his guilt keep him awake at night, Although this is a sign of redemption, this man is not feeling guilty for the right reasons, simply, the man is guilty for being caught, not the action itself. The man does not learn his lesson and continues to sin by being filled with “rage, more than demonical” (Poe 63), which causes him to kill his wife. By describing the man as being filled with demonic rage, the author alludes to the protagonist in the story as turning away from God just as Lucifer, the first demon, has done. Concluding, the man did not accept that it was his doing by killing his wife and cat. This shows that he has not grown as a person and continues to blame others for his problems, in this instance, blaming the cat for the discovering of his dead wife’s body. The man wishes for God to “deliver [him] from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend” (Poe 65), the fiend being the devil. This shows the man’s

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Tom Walker comes across the devil when walking through the woods on his way home. The devil reels Tom Walker in by speaking of money hidden away, the devil tells Tom Walker he can help him obtain the money on certain terms. We know Tom Walker is greedy because on page three hundred and fourteen, lines seventeen through twenty two, "...there lived near this place a meager, miserly fellow, the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself: they even conspired to cheat each other. ..

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REAL ESTATE BROKERS AND SALES AGENTS. The foreclosure of the properties from defaulted mortgages from clients that are unhappy and unwilling to follow legal proceedings. This problem connects to the theme of the story The Devil and Tom Walker because if you get a loan to buy a house then it shows competance to pay the loan back without valunable to foreclosure for your family so not as when Tom did not make solid ethical choices for himself and his wife when he refused to comply with her to pursue rich of their life and let her go to the swamp by herself as in the story "The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden.

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The stories, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and The Devil and Tom Walker each have there own style, theme, purpose of the writing, but most importantly they share similarities and differences. In the story from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God the author Jonathan Edwards gave a sermon with a purpose of warning people that they must turn to God for forgiveness before it is too late. If the people listened and turned to God they would be able to escape death by hell. Although, the only way forgiveness would be received is if the person was chosen by God through Jesus Christ, and they accepted.

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Not only does she take them, but she also hides them from Tom so he is unable to find them. The narrator illustrates, “… found nothing but a heart and liver tied up. ”(Irving online). Since, Mrs. Walker was not the purest of being of beings when she tried making a deal with the devil, he did not like what she proposed to him. The Devil killed Mrs. Walker but left the heart and liver since they were so tainted by who Mrs. Walker was that they have no value.

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In all three novels “The Feather Pillow” by Horacio Quiroga, “Prey” by Richard Matherson, and “ The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving all have an eloquent amount of elements all including Mystery/ambiguity: and a supernatural force included in their short stories. The authors purpose for these elements are to give the reader a thrill of mystery and supernatural forces that defy the nature of our world and fill the story with action, all wile keeping the reader reading to the end wile keeping them on the edge of their seat waiting to see what happens next. Each novel has supernatural forces teeming inside it ,effecting the novel and also adding -a so called- villain for the novel. First the short story “prey” by Matherson, has a supernatural

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Her greediness sparked up by the mention of wealth. According to Washington Irving in The Devil and Tom Walker, “Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil; he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife” (Irving 6). He basically turned down the

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Here he reflects upon his childhood of a cat and the story drastically changes to where he kills this cat. The inspiration of his cat leads to mental unsteadiness to where he kills his wife in the end. " Sat, the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder" (Poe 14). The power of government establishes the laws. Therefore he had broken them when commuting murder to his cat for animal abuse, and first degree murder for his wife.

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His problems may have caused him to become a killer and lose feeling for what is right and what is wrong. Also, when the killer was waiting to make his move, he heard the heart beat of the old man, and that sound repeated itself in his brain and jacked him up to kill. The narrator tried to convince the reader that he was not a mad man over and over again. After the murder he tries again to sell us his sanity: “And now have I [narrator] not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses” (Poe 305). He truly believes, with all his heart, that chopping up another human being heightened his senses and made him a better person.

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