Comparing Romanticism In The Devil And Tom Walker

Romanticism is an essential part of the early forms of American literature. Romantic’s, who value feelings and intuition as opposed to reason, seek to reveal higher truths through their writings. One way to reveal these truths is by the use imagination, as Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow do. Through the utilization of imagination, Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reveal distinct truths about life.
    In Washington Irving’s story, The Devil and Tom Walker, Irving uses his imagination to convey his thoughts about the truth of life through symbols and characterization. In one specific instance in the story, the main character, Tom Walker, is walking home and “he took what he considered a shortcut homeward, through the swamp. Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route.” The path being “thickly grown with great gloomy pines” symbolizes the path of wrongdoings, bad decisions, and darkness. By taking this path, one then strays off the path of

virtue and wholesomeness and partakes in life's darker sides. As result of Tom's decision to take this shortcut, or stray off life’s set path, he later becomes a fully corrupt and greedy man. Irving uses this unique creativity to show how when you stray onto the path “ill-chosen”, you can easily become corrupt and greedy. Another time in the text, when Tom Walker’s wife is missing, and Tom goes looking for her, he finds her apron with “nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it!”  Her main characteristic being greed, Tom Walker’s wife wants everything for herself and does not share. “[A] hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg.” Never satisfied with what she has, she goes looking for the Devil in the woods to make a deal for riches. The wife ends up losing her life with nothing but her heart and liver in an apron left behind. Through his imagination, Irving shows that greed just leads to emptiness. Another great romantic author is the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
    Using his imagination, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gets across his ideas about the truths of life through personification and repetition.

In Longfellow’s poem, The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls, Longfellow states “The little waves, with their soft white hands, / Efface the footprints in the sands.” By personifying the waves in the ocean, longfellow reveals the truth that all humans eventually die and their mark on the world is erased, like the waves wash away the footprints. In this imaginative way, Longfellow shows how no one lasts forever. Multiple times in other parts of the poem, Longfellow writes “And the tide rises, the tide falls.” Longfellow is expressing that the ocean is continuous, regardless of what happens. After losing his second wife, Longfellow was very depressed, and in this poem he is accepting that life goes on after someone dies. Using his imagination, Longfellow states the truth of the inevitability of death and the fact that life does not stop in the event of

death.
    Both Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow use their imagination throughout their writings to reveal important facts about life. In revealing these truths, both authors discuss the darker and sadder parts in life. In Today’s society, these messages still hold true , in that bad decisions and greed lead to destruction and death, and that death is inevitable and life goes on. Today, within Romantic’s writings, like Irving and Longfellow’s, one can still find many necessary truths about life.