Similarities Between The Devil And Tom Walker And The Fall Of The House Of Usher

“ Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” Edgar Allan Poe, The System of Dr.Tarr and Prof. Feather.) This is the opposite of what happens in the two stories, “ The Devil and Tom Walker, By Washington Irving,” and “ The Fall of the House of Usher, By Edgar Allan Poe.” There is a mood consisting of ominous and even eerie topics, this is mainly to add a mystic and even creepy effect to the stories provided. This is done through description, foreshadowing, satire and many other literary devices. These are all included in the stories to help the reader get a sense of dread and to help the reader picture/ imagine what is happening as the story is read or told. Even though the two stories relay a similar idea, they are very different

He struggles with monetary issues and is just miserable. The main event in this story or the climax is when he is walking through the swamp and encounters a tall black man ( The devil) who tells him about pirate treasure that has been buried and where it was buried at. Tom wants the treasure, however, to have it he needs to sell his soul. This is not directly mentioned in the story, however, it is to be assumed. To support this the text states, “ There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors.” ( Paragraph 34, Irving) This makes the readers infer that he sold his soul to acquire the treasure. The literary devices in this story are used very often. Most of them were foreshadowing. There is a lot of foreshadowing in the text. In contrast to Edgar Allan Poe’s, “ The Fall of the House of Usher.” Some examples include, “Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate.” (Paragraph 1 Irving) This is used to allow readers to only assume that this will be important to the plot of the story later. Another example would be the following, “ The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money and took it under his guardianship…” (Paragraph 1 Irving) These are some of the instances where foreshadowing was used. In contrast to this, Edgar Allan Poe’s, “ The Fall of the House of Usher,” Includes a good bit

Though Poe was the “ Father of Gothic literature,” He was not the first to write it. Washington Irving wrote his story nearly a decade before Poe wrote “ The Fall of the House of Usher.” They use a good bit of the same feature to create the settings of the stories. There is the use of foreshadowing in both stories( More in The Devil and Tom Walker,) but they both utilize it. They both utilize the features of nature to their advantage however. The text, “ The Fall of the House of Usher” states the following, “ I looked upon the scene before me- upon the mere house, the simple landscape feature of the domain- upon the bleak walls- upon the vacant cat-like windows- upon a few rank sedges- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees- with an utter depression of soul, which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the revealer upon opium- the bitter lapse into everyday life- the hideous dropping of the veil.”( Paragraph 1 Poe) This is how the features of nature are utilized. In Washington Irving’s, “ The Devil and Tom Walker” similar elements are used. The text states, “ One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a shortcut homeward, through the swamp. Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them