Essay on the Devil in Paradise Lost, Holy Bible, Faust, and Devil and Tom Walker

During the early 1700s, a traveler met a man in the Massachusetts forest. However, this was no mortal man, but the devil. “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Devil and Tom Walker,” two short stories, both start out in this way. Washington Irving wrote the latter in 1824, which tells how Tom Walker profited through working for the devil. In 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “Young Goodman Brown,” which describes Goodman Brown’s woodland encounter with the Devil. The two stories share specific ideas regarding the devil, overpowering minor deviations between each other.

Satan’s character embodies the idea of a heroic figure because he questions what he feels to be true, even though his tragic fall is that he becomes easily misguided.

The devil at the dawn of Christianity bore little resemblance to the ruler of hell, the antichrist and agent of evil that he is known as in present day. Satan makes few overt or implied appearances in the Old Testament. For the important role of God’s greatest adversary, early Christians had to flesh out great parts of Satan’s story in order to develop him into his present, fearsome persona. The Christian story of the Devil is heavily influenced by earlier Greek mythology, and early Christian writings about the Devil co-opted local mythology in order to gain new converts and discredit popular pagan beliefs.

Both authors describe the devil similarly. When first encountered, they portray him described as a mostly normal person, with only a subtle clue to his

In this story we can see many interesting facts about the main character Tom Walker such as his relations with other characters and his own beliefs. In the story we can see how Tom doesn’t accept the deal with the Devil at first, but when his wife dies in hands of the Devil, Tom Walker now accepts to do the deal; however he doesn’t accept because he feels like he has lost everything but because now his wife can’t take away any part of the treasure and now he will do the things he wants for his own good and not to please

The devil does this in order to obtain Tom Walkers soul. As a moneylender, Tom Walker has very bad morals. When he is a moneylender he puts people out of bussiness and tries to make profit off the peoples losses. Washingtong Irving descrbies Tom Walker as, “Thus Tom was universal friend of the needy, and acted like a ‘friend in need’; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of the terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages gradually squeezing his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door” (33). Tom Walker doesn’t seem to care about what his afterlife has in store for him. Everything he is doing is just making him worse as a person. This shows how Tom Walker was greedy and how some people will do anything to make money.

The appearance of the devil’s in the two stories are quite different, for example, the devil in the Hawthorne story has black eyes, natty clothes, and a staff. He looks like anyone else and is “about fifty years old”; he is similar to Brown and is no different from him (Hawthorne 2). The devil’s staff has a black snake appearance and looked as if it was twisting and wriggling “like a live serpent”(2). Appearance is a large portion of how people are perceived. If the devil wasn’t dressed nicely; people wouldn’t trust him as much or believe him. When dressed nicely; people are more likely to trust them and associate with them. In the King story the devil represents fire, for instance, he has orange eyes. His mouth was as big as a sharks and when it opened you’d see fierce orange just like his eyes. He also wore natty

As people grow up, it is made apparent to them that the Devil is an evil and rather a clever person. The greatest example of the devil in action is when the devil tempts Jesus. As most know, the devil fails to get Jesus to do evil. Jesus is both human and divine while the main character of The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom Walker, is a “meager, miserly fellow”. Unfortunately, Tom Walker is not Jesus so the reader must focus in on Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker to see just exactly how and when the Devil won his game. Irving portrays to the reader that the devil cannot be beaten at his own game through setting, characters, and plot. As people have seen in sports, the setting of a game (where, when, weather, etc.) can have a big impact on the game. The same goes for The Devil and Tom Walker.

Intent and Motive in The Devil and Tom Walker and The Devil and Daniel Webster

In the stories “Man in The Black Suit” and “Young Goodman Brown”, the authors show the effect of evil on innocence by using the Devil as a source of evil and the innocent faith of others being poisoned by his actions. In both stories the Devil is feared because of the frightening thought of his death touch corrupting minds. The characters encounter with the Devil left an imprint on them both mentally and physically that will forever be remembered. The Devil wanted to corrupt their minds and turn them towards evil by making them believe lies. The Devil’s evil intentions in the stories left a great impact on the characters both negatively and positively.

The devil is suggested a couple of times (and I may have missed more instances). Once by the woman at the bar talking to James Vane: "They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face" (Wilde 160). I think the more important reference was by Basil Hallward in viewing the painting the night Dorian killed him: "Christ! What a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil" (Wilde 131).

The devil’s corruption also exploits the sins of the portrait’s artist. Little did he know that he painted the devil through the holiest of methods: art. This tale, in conjunction with being a

Just as each Devil’s motivation for enlarging his kingdom varies, so do their relationships with God. This differing in goals also reflects the change in humanity’s religious pursuits between the time periods. When Faustus tries to seek God’s forgiveness, Lucifer expresses his displeasure when he says “We come to tell thee thou dost injure us […] Thou shouldst not think of God: think of the Devil” (Marlow 5). This Devil’s dislike for God is evident in his jealousy over Faustus’s pledge of allegiance. He can’t seem to stand it when Faustus talks about Paradise or creation. This ultimatum to only think of the Devil, as well as the previously identified thirst for power, alludes to some sort of conflict between the Devil and God in Dr. Faustus.

Not only does the devil represent a powerful, manipulating force in capitalism, but a fake artist who Immortal Technique claims he will inevitably destroy and exploit. In the third line of the chorus, Technique mentions the reparations of restitution that is owed by fake rap artists for the damage that their rubbish has caused to the rap game. The final line gets back to the idea of big industry having a deadly

Gogol, in “The Night Before Christmas,” and Bulgakov, in Master and Margarita display the Devil as a foreigner. However, Bulgakov’s Devil is in the non-traditional sense of a Devil while Gogol’s Devil qualifies as a classical Devil in appearance yet participates in unorthodox evil doings. The Devil, as depicted by Gogol and Bulgakov, is a foreigner. Characters within “The Night Before Christmas” refer to the Devil as someone unfamiliar, like he has come from another world and like he does not belong in their realm.