Washington Irving’s story The Devil and Tom Walker is also set in New England outside of Boston around 1727 in a wooded swamp. It too refers to the past mentioning pirates, an old fort and indians. “About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down to their knees…”(text, p.177) Washington Irving goes to great lengths to transport the reader back to an earlier time.
The author used his characters to show how society took a dim view of sin, and how the desire for money is evil and corrupting. “They (Tom and his wife)were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other.”(text, Irving, p.178) “All of her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man’s terms that would make them wealthy for life.”(text, Irving, p.181) Tom Walker and his wife are so concerned with money that not only are they willing to cheat each other, but the idea of making a deal with the devil to secure vast
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In the past changes would have been slower. “ ‘There were times and places - in the Europe of the Middle Ages, as an example - where music might remain largely the same for hundreds of years’ writes Selwyn Duke in ‘Influential Beats: The Cultural Impact of Music.’ “And it is no coincidence that in medieval times something else also remained quite constant: culture. It is clear to me that changes in music hew closely to changes in society’s consensus worldview. This explains why musical tastes change so quickly today; with no dominant cultural stabilizer, such as the Catholic Church...the ability to transmit ideas worldwide at a buttons touch via modern media...” (Huang, Belinda) With access to the internet to spread new forms of music combined with the lack of consistently applied religious beliefs society today is bombarded with a variety of music that would not have been allowed