Washington Irving was the author of “The Devil and Tom Walker”, in his early life he began to study to be a lawyer, but soon falling away from that finding he had more interest in traveling and writing. Irving’s work including, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”, became known as an important part of American heritage today. The setting was in New England, the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevaled. Around the area of where Tom Walker had lived with his wife, Tom had found an old Indian fort which he chose to rest at on his way homeward. The main characters in “The Devil and Tom Walker” are obviously the Devil, “a great black man...neither Negro nor Indian” and Tom Walker who was a “miserly fellow”.
“Romanticism is seen as a response to the Enlightenment.” (4) It makes sense that the literature was the way that it was during this time period. Americans were essentially looking for someone to liberate them from British rule so they could finally experience freedom. It was all about the “heroism” and superiority of the American man. Lewis and
Have you ever called something, one thing while your friend calls it another? Have you ever heard of the Devil being called Hell-Boy or Satan? In both of these stories the Devil is called Scratch. The supporting characters in “The Devil and Tom Walker”,written by Washington Irving, differ from the supporting characters in “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, written by Stephen Vincent Benet. First, let’s talk about the supporting characters.
The story “The Devil and Tom Walker” takes place in a stagnant, lonely and treacherous forest. The author, Washington Irving, while writing was also a satirist and a lawyer. He made short fiction popular and was a very original writer. The characters in this story include Tom Walker, Tom Walker’s wife, and the devil. The conflict in this story is when Tom Walker realizes that he does not want to go to hell, so he makes a deal with the devil.
Washington Irving consolidates many things to take out and use in our daily life in his story. He tells us how society transforms into monsters who only care about the pretentious wealthy. Many wealthy people are blindsided and only care about themselves and maintaining their image. They do not understand how money is not everything and they have to focus on real things. They simply do not care and or realize the side effects of living as such.
In the fictional story written by Washington Irving, "The Devil and Tom Walker," the author illustrates the persuasion used by the devil himself, his attempts to push Walker into becoming a slave trader to fulfill his desire of wealth, this gives us an idea of what the people of the 1720s and the 1730s were like, desperate for an easy escape using money. Irving writes “Tom resolutely refused: he was bad enough in all conscience, but the Devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-trader.” This embodies that although Tom had some evil in him to achieve what he wanted, he wouldn’t turn to such extremes, and it seems as if people during that time wanted an escape from the poverty they were suffering from the separation of the mother country.
American Romanticism were mostly written during the 1800’s. The use of American Romanticism was to get readers to read. The authors would exaggerate stories to get them attached and start reading them. American Romanticism were stories that were mostly gothic or dark stories. The death of a protagonist is usually over exaggerated.
In the story “ The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, the theme of greed is exaggerated through Tom Walker’s life story. Throughout the story, Walker’s estranged and miserly relationship with his wife, his self-beneficial life choices that harm others, and his unfortunate and pitiful death, demonstrate horrible occurrences in a greed-filled lifestyle. Irving also elucidates to readers that consistent desires and the feelings of dissatisfaction towards everything will eventually lead to an undesirable ending. Emphasis on the above aspects of his life however, is placed to inevitably reveal that Tom Walker’s consistent and developing greed throughout the story suggest how human beings have an instinctive desire that invariably grows. In Tom Walker’s life, his relationship with his wife reveals that his greed overcame the precious bond of marriage and continued to grow.
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” (Churchill). Irving was a very successful writer in his time and still well known today. Washington Irving is firmly planted into the tapestry of American literature because of his use of mood and symbolism in his short story, “The Devil and Tom Walker”. Washington Irving was born in New York City in 1783. Irving had a knack for making up authors for stories he created.
American Romanticism emerged after America gained it’s independence from Britain. The movement began in Europe and quickly spread across the world. As American literature and art transitioned from Puritanism to Romanticism, God and religion were not the main ideas of these things anymore. Romantic pieces tended to focus on the beauty of nature, imagination, and emotion. Authors like Henry Longfellow would write uplifting romanticized pieces.
Symbols of Society in “The Devil and Tom Walker” In this short story “The Devil and Tom Walker”, the author Washington Irving uses token objects as an analogy to society. “The Devil and Tom Walker” is a short story written in archetype plot. This story is based off a play from the 1750’s called Faust, about a man that sells his soul to the devil to achieve gain. This man somehow cleverly beats the devil, but unfortunately Tom Walker does not.
In Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Irving characterizes Tom as selfish man that only cares about himself. In the beginning of the story, Tom decides to take a shortcut through a swamp where he encounters the devil asking to make a deal. When he arrived home, Tom shares to his wife about the hidden treasure mentioned by the devil, which encourages his wife to make a deal with the devil herself and take all the portable article of value as an offering. After his wife’s extensive disappearance, he decides to search for her but only discovers his wife’s organs Instead of worrying about mysterious disappearance, Tom is most concerned about the loss of his items when he whispers to himself, “‘Let us get hold of the property... we
The short story “The devil and Tom Walker '' by Washington Irving represents the beliefs of the Dark Romanticism movement. In the story Tom has a strong ego and he makes decisions that he later regrets. Tom bargains with the devil to gain wealth; however, when he later regrets his decision, he becomes a violent church-goer. In the end, though, Tom is unable to fix his mistakes. Irving's story illustrates three major tenets of Dark Romanticism which includes the presence of the supernatural, the belief that nature is dark and evil, and the belief that individuals are prone to sin.
American literature has undergone enormous changes, with each era being a representation of the beliefs and values of the time period. The stories “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Devil and Tom Walker” are two examples of American literature that represent different eras and their changing beliefs. James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” follows Walter Mitty, who uses vivid daydreams to escape his tiresome life. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving encompasses Tom Walker’s greediness, which eventually leads him to make a deal with the devil. Although Thurber’s piece is from the modernism era and Irving's piece is from the puritanism era, both authors analyze a theme of escapism, an insightful perspective that
American Romanticism lasted from the 1830s to 1865 and was a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that was inspired by the European Romantic movement. This time period was very fragile in America because of the uncertainty of building a new nation, where people thought they fit in that nation, and the Civil War that broke out in 1861. To help out the disorganized nation, American romantics used poems, short stories, and novels to provide a new way of thinking that showed a faith in nature as a revelation of truth and moral values and a tendency to value individualism over all social forms or systems. Works like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Much Madness Is Divine Sense” by Emily Dickinson, “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, “The Devil and Tom Walker” by
