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During the American Renaissance, writers were put into one of two categories. The categories were the Dark Romantics and the Transcendentalists. Some Dark Romantics include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. The Dark Romantics stories included creepy symbols, horrific themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin. The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving gives a few examples as to why life is meaningless to some people.Humans are not all good, there are some cruel people in this world. The Pit and the Pendulum tells you exactly why. Some humans believes that life is pointless because they think no one cares about them. In the story The Devil and Tom Walker by Edgar Allan Poe, Tom made a pact with the devil that he could be rich in return for his soul. Tom declined his offer went home …show more content…
When he told her, she wasn’t content that he turned it down because they could’ve had money. So the following day she went out to the forest to go look for the devil. He waited to full day to go look for her because she took the pots and pans with her when she went to go meet up with the devil. He didn’t want to find her because he missed her. He wanted to find her because she had the pots that he could sell and make money off of. When he was walking in the forest on the look for her, he saw that her check apron was hanging on the branch of the tree. “Let us get hold of the property and we will endeavor to do without the woman”( Irving 158). When he took the apron off of the branch, he saw that nothing was in it but his wife’s heart and liver tied up in it. The point of this section is that Tom’s wife meant nothing to him because instead of being worried about her,
The Romantic Period in American literature seems to be anything but romantic. That is, unless you love death and the devil. Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving wrote short stories about the devil and dying during this time. These writers do write about them in slightly different ways. Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum," is about a man and "the dread sentence of death." As he is before the judges, the "thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave" comes to his mind. The man passes out and then wakes up in a dungeon. He tries to figure out how large the dungeon is and finally gets brave enough to try to go across the room, but in the middle of the dungeon, he finds a well. At the well,
Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” includes great examples of Romanticism, such as symbols in nature having links to the supernatural, the importance of the inner nature, and the emphasis of the individual. In the story, Tom Walker is a selfish man who cares more about money than he does about anyone else, including his wife. One day, while he is walking through the woods, Tom Walker comes across the Devil, who makes a deal with him to exchange his soul for the treasure that is buried in those woods. Tom declines and returns back to his wife and tells her that he has passed on an opportunity that could bring them lots of money. Tom’s wife, outraged by his actions, decides to strike a deal of her own with the Devil and after several attempts, she never returns from the woods. The next time Tom goes to the woods he finds that his wife had been killed by the Devil. He finally agrees to make the deal with him, now that Tom doesn’t have to share anything with his wife. Tom ignores the Devil’s suggestion of becoming a slave-trader and becomes a moneylender instead. He gets wea...
In the book of “The Devil and Tom Walker” marriage was where the most struggle lies. When you are married you love one another and want to please each other and more all positive things about them there may be some negative but every relationship has ups and downs. But nothing is like this one his own wife wanted him to
Edgar Allen Poe is the author of many great pieces of literature. He uses his narrators to explain situations that are going on in their life. The narrators of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Black Cat" demonstrate their love for mans inhumanity to man and animals through horrific murders.
From the early 18th century through to the beginnings of the Civil War, a literary movement known as Romanticism emerged as the main style of writing in America. Characterized by a religious response to nature, self-interest, and a fascination with the supernatural, Romanticism replaced the Enlightenment period writing style, inspiring an idealistic attitude among people. Washington Irving, an influential author of the Romantic period, wrote “The Devil and Tom Walker”, a story whose characters and descriptions embody the qualities of Romanticism. After selling his soul to the devil, Tom Walker spends the rest of his life making a fortune for himself while cheating innocent people out of their assets.
Written during the American Romanticism period, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” by William Irving, personifies the belief in the primacy of imagination. The period of Romanticism in America is often seen as the crucial period of American culture, as it was the central movement of the Renaissance period that moved into a more free-feeling and artistic approach to literature. American Gothic literature made its early appearance with William Irving, first with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820, and carrying over to “The Devil and Tom Walker” in 1824, both of which use a macabre approach to establish a moral ending (Matterson). Told by a narrator known as Geoffrey Crayon, “The Devil and Tom Walker” takes on the tone of a legend or tall tale as the story describes the life of a greedy money lender by the name of Tom Walker, who sells his soul to the devil to gain wealth. Irving ultimately uses literary elements such as symbolism and character development, as well as themes such as greed and hypocrisy to establish a moral to the corrupt man’s tale.
The Romantic era writers, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe, had many similarities but even more differences, in both writing theme and style. This is very evident in their works, “Rip Van Winkle”, by Irving, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Poe.
Just as the European romantics cared about emotions, nature, imagination, meditation, humanity and freedom, the American first "group of great imaginative writers -Irving, Bryant and Poe" (readers Note p 57) -cared about the them too . In their writings, these writers were taken by the romantic ideals empathizing on nature, creating their own world, borrowing sets from the past or from legends, meditating their life, and finding their own explanations to its processes . With such attitudes, these writers made their way into literature as romantics . " The Devil And Tom Walker","Hop Frog", " To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" serve as good examples for American Romanticism .
Although at times it is easy to get carried away with the adventure of a story, noticing the elements a writer has put into his work is very important. In reading “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” you can see both similarities as well as differences of how both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving chose to illuminate their romantic writing styles. The writers both use a mystical woodsy setting with supernatural twists to draw in readers. Underlying you will find the differing romantic themes each writer used, as well as how each writer chose to end their work.
Process philosophy is the philosophy that embraces change and the developmental factors in a society. “Process philosophy was created out of the failure of Romanticism-Transcendentalism, a failure which resulted in a very profound theological shift” (Martin, 2006, pp. 145). The failure of the Romanticism-Transcendentalism period caused people to question the belief system that was present. The uncertainty and second guessing ultimately had people looking for something else to put their beliefs into. This was when a new philosophical outlook was formed, process philosophy. This new outlook was very different from the old outlook in which there were no real absolutes that exist. Since no real absolutes exist, which can also be referred to as relativism, there is no belief of the supernatural which means there is an absence of God. “The abandonment of the supernatural, then, leaves us with a process view of life and existence, including man. We shift from an absolutist view to a process view, which comes to be known as process philosophy” (Martin, 2006, pp. 149). Shifting from an absolutist view to a process view of life inevitably
Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were writers of the American gothic genre. They both used the elements of horror and mystery in their writing styles, writing about the dark side of humanity and the evil that lives within the human mind. Both used themes and symbols that focused on darkness and evil with their characters fighting various psychological issues. However, Poe’s stories are told in the first person narrative and he focuses on one human psychological effect, looking at man’s thoughts from within his mind and how his behavior then affects his surroundings. Hawthorne uses the third person and focuses more on how man’s thoughts and behaviors are the results of what is happening around him.
Of the Romantic Movement, two of the most well-known Gothic literature writers were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Gothic writers mainly wrote about themes that showed that they did not believe that people were ‘good’ by nature and the stories they wrote focused on the evils and flaws of mankind. These two authors presented their respective stories “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” as novels that explore the lives and behaviors of other human characters. Although the stories have different perspectives and settings, they both reveal more about how the other human characters are and what dark or unusual traits and motives they have.
The dark Romantics point out problems within society; trying to change peoples’ flaws, greed, taking shortcuts, etc. Despite their countless number of complaints, they offer no solutions. In the Devil and Tom Walker, the central theme of greed in which Tom “accumulated bonds, and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them at length, dry as a sponge from his door,” (Irving) illustrates problems with humanity, but no solution. Despite the devil reaping karma on Tom Walker, the rational mind creates realistic solutions to the problems of life. Laws are put in place limiting greedy malpractices while lawyers, possibly the most rational minded people alive, help the needy obtain the financial justice they deserve. In modern society, the 2008 Financial Crisis portrays the lasting lust of of quick money. Prosecutors, Rationalist in mind, sued big banks who took advantage of hundreds of people. Could Washington Irving assist these cheated people with a simple story? Irving becomes further refuted within Poe’s “Sonnet to Science”. Despite Poe’s belief that realism deteriorates humanity, his statement “Vulture, whose wings are dull realities” (Poe) presents that the realists are in fact the ones who see the problems within society. Romantics use imagination which distracts them from the truth, but Rationalists see the world for what it is, therefore having the
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
In the mid 1800’s America was in full swing of the romanticism movement. During this time readers were entertained by the fresh new writing styles of the latest authors. There were several famous authors in this era such as: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant. One innovative author from this movement however, added a new dynamic writing style that still intrigues many readers today. Edgar Allen Poe, through his invention of detective stories, has become a house hold name to many. In his short stories “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” Poe describes two heinous crimes committed by men whose motives can only be traced back to their deranged perception of reality, domestic relationships, and a soul whose thirst can only be quenched through violence.