ipl-logo

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

764 Words4 Pages

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

Show More
Related

Analysis Of Tom Walker's Greed

331 Words | 2 Pages

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. ..

Read More

Analysis Of The Devil And Tom Walker

706 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

Comparing Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God And The Devil And Tom Walker

771 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

Archetypes In The Devil And Tom Walker

676 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

Supernatural Elements In The Devil And Tom Walker

532 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More

The Devil And Tom Walker Devil Analysis

971 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More

How Does Arthur Miller Use Religion In The Crucible

564 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

The Devil And Tom Walker Greed Essay

910 Words | 4 Pages

Irving uses everyday objects in Tom Walker’s life to convey a larger theme of greed. Tom walker's possessions later in life become symbolic of his demise through greed. After Tom makes a deal with the devil in the woods, he moves to Boston to start a new business venture. He quickly developed a reputation for lending out money, which people are more and more demanding, because the local economy under Governor Belcher's administration has recently collapsed. “He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation: but left a greater part of it unfinished and unfinished, out of parsimony”(Irving 237).

Read More

Entrapment In Gothic Literature Essay

559 Words | 3 Pages

In gothic literature, the elements used by the author depicts how the piece of work is going to unfold. Authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving depict the themes of psychological issues and entrapment through the short stories: “Black Cat”by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”by Edgar Allan Poe, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving. The gothic theme of entrapment is commonly used across various pieces of literature. Entrapment is the idea of being contained by something either physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Read More

Tell Tale Heart Thesis

760 Words | 4 Pages

“I've heard many things in the heaven and in the earth. I've heard many things in hell”(Poe). In the story The tell tale heart, a man ends up killing his old man over his “Vulture eye”. He loved the old man. But his “evil eye” vexed him and he decided to take his life.

Read More

The Black Cat Argumentative Essay

647 Words | 3 Pages

In the gruesome short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe a nameless narrator tells his story of his drunken and moody life before he gets hung the next day. The intoxicated narrator kills his favorite cat, Pluto and his wife with an axe. Soon enough, the narrator gets caught and there he ends up, in jail. Although, most readers of “The Black Cat” have argued the narrators insanity, more evidence have shown that he is just a moody alcoholic with a lousy temper.

Read More

Sin And The Chance Of Redemption In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

1029 Words | 5 Pages

Effect of Sin and the Chance of Redemption Sin is a powerful action that has an everlasting consequence of guilt. Once done, the person wants to forget about his felonious actions; however, hopefully a person’s conscience is a constant, nagging reminder. In order to be free of the constant pain, redemption is pursued for even the person who sinned in public or private. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne proves that the truth of sin eventually need to be confronted in order for a person to stop suffering.

Read More

The Tell Tale Heart The Narrator's Insanity Analysis

945 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

Examples Of Human Nature In The Black Cat

588 Words | 3 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe addresses the dark and gruesome side of human nature in his writing “The Black Cat”, which during that time and even now are perceived as radical ideas. This dark human nature is displayed in Poe’s writing as the narrator recalls the happenings of a most erratic event. The narrator, a pet lover with a sweet disposition, in this story succumbs to the most challenging aspects of human nature including that of addiction, anger, and perverseness. To the Christian believer, human’s sinful flesh leads people to do wrong because that is their natural tendency.

Read More

The Black Cat Psychological Analysis

909 Words | 4 Pages

In "The Black Cat," there are numerous cases where guilt can be believed to presumably having control over the main character 's identity. Sadly, this guilt does not keep him from stopping him from continuing with his sins. The lead character changes from a lovely individual to a wild one who beverages, reviles, and murders his partner and pets. Hence, his pets begin to stay away from him as he says, “I fancied that the cat avoided my presence” (Poe 5). Therefore, he becomes more abusive and aggressive upon receiving ignorance from his pets, especially Pluto, the black cat.

Read More

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

Related Topics

Open Document