Washington Irving's The Devil And Tom Walker
In Washington Irving's story "The Devil and Tom Walker," the narrator Geoffrey Crayon personifies both the romantic aspect of the poem's nature which is gloomy but has romantic qualities and the devil, who is evil and dark. Mid-nineteenth-century Transcendentalism sparked the development of Dark Romanticism as a reaction. Dark Romanticism has a strong emphasis on the supernatural, on dark decaying environments and animals, and on evil characters that are prone to committing sins that will ultimately lead to their own demise. The presence of the supernatural is the first aspect of Dark Romanticism that Irving included in "The Devil and Tom Walker. " The story as a whole shows evidence of the supernatural, but one phrase in particular stood
Washington Irving, an 18th century author, wrote a short story based on the legend of Faust which he named “The Devil and Tom Walker”. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” Washington Irving uses imagery to establish mood. First, when Tom Walker takes a shortcut home through a swamp, Irving describes the swamp as follows “The swamp was was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black, smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog, and the watersnake; where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire.
“The Devil and Tom Walker”, perhaps Washington Irving’s most famous work, details a story about a man named Tom Walker and his deal with the Devil. Throughout the story, Irving makes heavy use of satire: the usage of irony or other humors with the intent to mock the vices of humanity. We first see his satirization demonstrated with matrimony, revolving around Tom’s hatred of his own wife to the extent of relishing in her death. Next, he pokes fun at the wealthy white establishment, particularly slave-owners, by portraying them as totally immoral and worse than even the Devil. The final subject of Irving’s satire, and by far his largest one, is the way in which he depicts the Christian community as fueling the Devil’s power, contrary to what they want to believe.
In the short story “the devil and Tom walker” written by Washington Irving, he likes to poke fun at marriages. Irving uses the marriage of Tom and his wife as an example of how much he looks down upon marriages. Irving uses satire to criticize the existence of marriage and people who marry. Through observing the walkers, Irving demonstrates the way he sees marriage in a negative way, Tom won’t sell his soul and he even feels he should cheat, as well as at the end his wife is missing and he becomes happy about it and praises the person who did this.
In both short stories, “The Devil and Tom Walker”by, Washington Irving and “The Minister’s Black Veil”by, Nathaniel Hawthorne religion is used to expose the hypocrisy of Tom Walker who pretends to be Christian and the Puritan townspeople who judge the minister for exposing his secret sin while sinning themselves. Tom Walker decides to make a deal with the devil for financial gain. Once Tom Walker reaches old age he realizes he is going to hell and tries to figure out a way to cheat the devil. He begins going to church obnoxiously praying and judging the churchgoers for how they choose to practice their The “quiet Christians” would be praying modestly to themselves while Tom would be obnoxiously praying trying to one-up them. Irving compares Tom’s newfound Christianity to his job as a loan shark.
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.
In the short folktale story “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving shows different forms of archetypal behavior like greed, selfishness, and evil. Tom Walker and his wife were quite alike with a few differences. Tom Walker and his wife do not have the typical relationship. They cheat each other whenever they get the opportunity. Anything his wife can get her hands on with little or no value his wife hides it from him.
Washington Irving, in his story The Devil and Tom Walker, written in 1824, is seen as critical of many aspects of society. Through the use of satire, Irving criticized the institution of marriage, religion, and the “white establishment”. In what way does Irving take on organized religion? Irving describes Deacon Peabody as “an eminent man, who had waxed wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians.
The Devil and Tom Walker is a short story written in the Gothic period of American Literature. In the story, Tom Walker makes a deal with the devil that comes with a heavy price. The deal is that if Tom sells his soul to the Devil, then the Devil will in turn make Tom rich. Throughout the story there is rich imagery and creative writing styles that show a direct correlation to the Gothic Period.
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.
The first settlers of the colonies were profound Puritans. They believed heavily in God’s righteousness and sovergnty. In his sermon, Sinners in the hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards intended to show both God’s power and man’s depraved nature. Edwards begins his sermon by discussing man’s corrupted ways, “…Natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it… ”(Edwards 106).
Washington Irving’s, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. is a collection of thirty-four of his essays and short stories. Attributed to the fictional Dutch historian character, Diedrich Knickerbocker, are two of Irving’s most popular stories, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Rip Van Winkle is the story of a Dutch villager, living at the foot of the Catskill mountains before and after the American Revolutionary War. Van Winkle is genuinely loved by the people of his village, especially by the children whom he tells ghost stories to, plays with, and gives toys. However, this simple, easy-going man has one great error in his character: he is incredibly lazy, despising work in all forms.
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