Vanessa Dybes, Francisco Soltero, Arthur Yang, Adoria Hamilton,Guillermo & Enrique Sanchez.

The Devil and Tom Walker

What moral lesson can you infer was used to teach people with this legend during the author’s time?

Essential Question

Building Background

In "The Devil and Tom Walker", Irving adapted the Germanic legend of Johann Faust, a 16th century magician and alchemist who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange of worldly power and wealth. Irving created an American character who strikes the same bargain and faces the same consequences but in an American setting.It takes place in the outskirts of Boston in the early 1700s; when the Puritans still dominated Massachusetts society.

About Washington Irving (1783-1859)

● Born at the end of American Revolution and named after our first president.

● Influenced other writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne● Pioneered the short story as a literary form● Growing up in a large prosperous New York Family, Irving came

to learn and appreciate literature, art, theater, and opera.● Considered painting as a career but used his talent to write

about the American landscapes he knew so well.● Spent much of his life abroad.● Author of “Rip Van Winkle” & “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Near a swamp in 1727, a man named Tom Walker comes across the remains of an old Indian fortification and discovers a tomahawk still buried in it. Tom kicks the skull and then meets the devil. The devil offers Tom the buried gold of the pirate Kidd on certain conditions (his soul). Tom shares his secret with his greedy wife, who sets off to bargain for the gold herself, but she disappears and is never seen again. Tom ends up accepting the deal with the devil and later in his life regrets it. He becomes aggressively religious in an attempt to escape his fate. The devil takes Tom’s soul and reduces his fortune to ashes.

Summary

● Promoted individuality, emotion, love and nature.

● Puritans-person’s life should be devoted to God.

● Tom resists change at first but gives in to greed.(anti-puritanistic).

● Devil (supernatural): offers answers to the couple’s problemso appeal to their imagination and desireso real world cannot offer these answers.

Romanticism

Imagery is words and phrases that appeal to the five senses, helping you to imagine precisely what people, places, and events in a literary works are like.

Irving provides a description in “The Devil and Tom Walker” so an understanding of the imagery is crucial to an understanding of the story-and to an enjoyment of its humor.

Specifically on the images of the Forlorn house, the straggling trees, and the starved horse to show you just how miserly Tom and his wife are.

Thematic Elements:

“Like most short cuts, it was an ill chosen route. The swamp 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 neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,

partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface

often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud;

there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole,

the bull-frog, and the water snake, and where trunks of pines and

hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators,

sleeping in the mire.” (351-352)

Imagery and Visualization

● Shortcut home=shortcut to wealth● Ill chosen route● Cost: eternal damnation● Symbolizes the wrong path

Swamp

Allegory: literary device where characters, objects and plot represent an idea.Devil=temptationTom & wife=greedBible=chance for salvation; left under mortgages.

Symbolism

● What is a “Faust Legend”- German legend about a protagonist named Faust. A scholar who is highly successful but not satisfied with his life, and makes a pact with the Devil by exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.

● Words to know○ Abode(n)- A dwelling place or home.○ Repose(v)- To rest or relax.○ Daunted(adj)- Intimidated or frightened.○ Propitious(adj)- Helpful or advantageous; favorable. ○ Ostentation(n)- display meant to impress others; boastful

showiness○ Melancholy(adj) gloomy; sad

Vocabulary

● A) Abode 1) Gloomy; sad

● B) Daunted 2) To rest or relax

● C) Melancholy 3) Helpful or advantageous; favorable

● D) Propitious 4) A dwelling place or home

● E) Repose 5) Intimidated or frightened

Vocab Mix: match the vocab

1. What kind of atmosphere did the beginning of the story have?2. What does Old Scratch offer Tom and what does he want in

return?3. How does the word ‘Ostentation’(357) relate the story?4. What kind of deal does Tom Walker make with the Devil?5. What were the different names of the Devil? 6. What happened to Tom Walker in the end?7. When looking for his wife, what did he find instead?8. How did Tom Walker change throughout the story?9. How does Tom try to get out of his bargain?

Comprehension Questions