The Devil And Tom Walker And Romanticism

Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” illustrates how an individual’s corruption results from their ability to resist temptation, the virtue to act generously, and the self-discipline to perform genuinely. Temptation, symbolized by the Devil and characterized by desperation in this prose, is that catalyst that forces Tom’s proverbial ball to roll. First and foremost, Tom chooses a shortcut home out of ease and lack of time that “like most shortcuts... was an ill-chosen route (280);” along his path of “smothering mud (280)” and “half-drowned, half-rotting [hemlocks and pines] (280)” –likely representative of the comeuppances of giving into temptations–Tom confronts the Devil for the first time and eventually ends up selling his soul

In “The Devil and Tom Walker” they use literary archetypes that represents universal patterns of human behavior or commonly-held beliefs. This story takes place in 1727 in Boston Massachusetts. There are three main characters who are very similar but a little different. Tom Walker is small, greedy, overly confident, and miserly. Tom Walker’s wife Mrs. Walker is selfish, verbally abusive towards Tom, and she is known as a termagant because she nags and complains all of the time. Last but not least old scratch has many other names that have been given to him by his personality, but he is the devil.

The Devil and Tom Walker is a short story written by Washington Irving. The story is about a legend of a pirates treasure hidden in a swamp and how a miserly man named Tom Walker finds it on his way home through a swamp. When Tom is in the swamp a dark tall man, Old Scratch, who Tom recognizes as the Devil, offers Tom a deal for the treasure. Tom goes home and tells his wife about the deal the Devil gave him, her greedy made her to take all their valuable possessions and go bargain with the Devil for the treasure. When she didn’t return Tom Walker decided to go look for his wife. When Tom was looking for her, he found her apron, liver, and her heart tied up to a tree. After seeing this Tom decided to make the deal with the Devil. The Devil tells Tom that he must do services to the devil for the treasure. He first tells Tom to become a slaver trader; however Tom refuses to become one. Finally the Devil tells Tom to become a corrupted money-loaner, which he agrees to, so he moves to Boston and becomes a moneylender. While at Boston Tom regrets doing the deal with the Devil and tries going to zealous church in a hope to redeem his soul for what has he done; however it was too late for Tom Walker. One afternoon while Tom’s victims were begging him for a delay, Tom lost his patience and his pity and yelled “The Devil take me… if I have made a farthing!" (Irving, The Devil and Tom Walker). Immediately after this statement Tom hears three knocks on his door and the Devil comes for Tom and rides away with him on his horse. The next day Tom’s house and all his belongings are burnt down, and Tom is never seen ever again.

Washington Irving also shows the theme of greed by how Tom Walker was a very cheap and greedy moneylender. During the time of this setting in “The Devil and Tom Walker,” people tried to do anything to make money. Joyce states, “while many had a keen sense of business, pothers were unethical in their dogged pursuit of riches (102).” This statement illustrates Tom Walker very. When Tom was discussing the terms of the deal with the devil, Tom wanted to make his interest rate even higher then what the devil origianally planned. Then devil said, “ You shall

What is the Tower of Babel? Besides being a big, old building, it is a symbol of the consequence of pride. The plan was to build a tower that could reach the heavens in order to “make a name for ourselves”, but God had different plans. He “scattered them” and “confused the language of the whole world” (Genesis 11). This story is just one of many in the Bible discussing the why the vice pride is regarded as the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. Both Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (“The Chase”) contain this theme, and thus provide insight on the disastrous results of pride.

The stories have two different themes but they go together hand and hand. The card player shows “... the extent of information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation”(Poe). Poe is trying to say that sometimes things are beyond what they seem from the outside, but that more information is available with more in depth observation. He shows this by comparing the chess player who just looks at the pieces with the card player. Tom Walker’s wife shows “All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man’s terms, and secure what would make them wealthy for life”(Irving). Tom and his wife both wanted to be wealthy and they did not care what they had to do in order to achieve the wealth. They end up giving up both their lives in order to receive the money from the black man. Both close observation and greed are similar because with one the other would most likely not occur.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe were extremely successful gothic or dark romantic authors of the 19th century. The two authors wrote a plethora of short stories that strayed from the rationalist styles of the 18th century and paved the way for other dark romantic authors. Romanticism focuses on emotions and nature while rationalism focuses on logic and reasoning. Hawthorne and Poe display the darker side of human nature throughout all of their works. Three especially good examples of this particular style are Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” as well as Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat.”

Though their desires are the same, once Tom Walker and Jabez Stone receive their dreams, they go about using the “gift” in very different ways. As Irving tells us, Tom Walker uses his fortune for personal gain: “He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door…In this way he made money hand over hand” (266). This passage shows Walker as a selfish man, concerned for only himself.

The author continuously characterizes Tom Walker in a way that makes the readers pity and resent him to not want to follow the example of his life. For example, after Tom's wife takes all their valuables and tries to strike a bargain with the devil when Tom wouldn’t do it himself, he goes looking for her in the woods. Irving shows just how little Tom cared about his wife when he describes his reaction to her disappearance and death. He is more concerned about the safety of his silverware, which she had taken with her. "He leaped with joy; for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.” That shows that he is really greedy and ruthless. However, Tom shows no remorse for his dead wife and has evidence that shows that his wife had beaten up even the

convey both the mood and meaning of the narrative. Irving creates a setting that is

The authors of “The Devil and Tom Walker”, “The Black Cat”, and “Prey” all used grotesque or bizarre occurrences as a theme to help get their life lessons across. Moreover, in “The Devil and Tom Walker” the author used grotesqueness to scare people into learning money cannot buy you happiness. Tom Walker’s malevolent wife believed that she would find her utopia if she had money. Tom Walker realized she had never returned home; so one night Tom went out looking for her in the Devil’s woods and “found nothing but a heart and liver tied up…” in an apron perched upon the tree he was looking at (Irving 7). This unsightly scene displays that his wife - who had given up everything to have money - was killed by the Devil and the Devil took her organs and threw them in a tree. Washington Irving’s short anecdote displays the grotesque in order to punctuate his life lesson of money cannot buy you happiness into your brain. In “The Black Cat” the author

The Early Romantics were inspired by Americas beauty. The Early Romantics stressed individualism. They put a lot of value on the common person. Some of the more known authors of The Early Romantics were William Cullen Bryant and Washington Irving. Bryant wrote about his views on death and after life in the poem “ Thanatopsis.” It shared a lot of my same thoughts on death and after life and really shared a story filled with emotion and feeling. “The Devil and Tom Walker” was a writing by Washington Irving, who was the inventor of the short story. This story criticized people and their greed. His message in the story to me was that its not always worth selling your soul to the “devil” in exchange to get what you

Edgar Allan Poe can be considered a Gothic writer because his work exhibits several key traits of Gothic artwork. The Gothic romance of the early 17th century began as an artistic movement against the Enlightenment and, as a result, is characterized by its focus on the exact opposite of everything the Enlightenment stood for; such as death, decay, and reversal of the natural order. In exploring Poe as a Gothic writer this discussion will focus on his use of madness and the irrational in "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", as well as the failure of reason in "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Cask of Amontillado".

Edgar Allen Poe has created many stories that are dark, suspenseful, and murderous such as The Tell- Tale Heart and The Black Cat. His works tend to resemble one another in style, mood, theme, and plot. The ways in which these elements are displayed show contrast between the two. The Tell- Tale Heart and The Black Cat are two brutal tales with similar themes about being insane. Both stories are told from the first person point of view with a maniacal narrator.

Romanticism took a dark turn in the mid-19th century, it became known as Dark Romanticism or Gothicism. Dark Romanticism placed focus on vampires, sin, and ghosts. Two of the most popular authors are this time are Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville.