Examples Of Romanticism In The Devil And Tom Walker

The short story “The Devil and Tom Walker”, written by Washington Irving, has many examples of Romanticism throughout. “The Devil and Tom Walker” is about a man named Tom Walker and how he stumbled across a old Indian fortress in the woods. As Tom is walking through, he kicks an old skull and the Devil come out. The Devil offers him the Indians buried treasure in exchange for his soul. Tom declines the offer and goes back home to his wife to tell her about the offer. After Tom tells his wife, she storms off in a fit to go make a deal with the Devil. After a few days of waiting for his wife to come back, Tom goes out to look for her. When he gets back to the old Indian fortress, Tom finds his wife's things up in the trees and goes to find the

As Tom is walking through the woods, he meets a stranger who “pointed and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down” (Irving). This applies to Tom in the sense that he thinks he is healthy, but in reality his soul is weak and diminishing. Also, Tom shows he is corrupt when he, “consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness." (Irving). Tom shows he is corrupt when he thanks the Devil for killing his wife. Similar to the Devil, Tom refuses to see the value of how precious a life is. Finally, the last form of corruptness is when, Scratch states, “You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter.” (Irving). The firewood that Scratch is going to burn represents all of the people in hell. Irving shows how corrupt the characters are when he compares nature to

Walking through the forest, Tom “Looked around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the same name of some great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe.” (Irving). The names of the people who were carved into the tree were passed members of the town Tom lived in today. The members were very wealthy and feared. When walking through the old Indian fortress, Tom stumbles across a “cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him.” (Irving). The old tomahawk connects us to the past in the sense that was a weapon of war so that there must have been war or it could mean that life was very tough and tools were needed to do everyday tasks. Finally, in talking to Old Scratch, he states, “this woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the soil. Old Scratch is saying that before there was any town, it was his. When the settlers came in they claimed it for themselves and showed that they are greedy.Tom and other characters connect to the past through the colonies