The Devil and Tom Walker AnalysisEssay Preview: The Devil and Tom Walker AnalysisReport this essayWith “The Devil and Tom Walker,” Washington employs the development of atmosphere and tone to express his theme. The atmosphere is set mainly through setting and character description. The meeting with the Devil transpires near an abandoned Indian fort where the natives were rumored to have “held incantations and made sacrifices to the evil spirit.” Toms shortcut home is described quite grimly as well. The mire, or morass, is described as precarious, treacherous, dark, and stagnant. Also, a religious undertone is set early on with “just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees.” The morbid and religious atmosphere set by Irving helps to portray his interpretations of greed, immorality, and miserliness. The combination of Puritan New England and the swamp setting give off a feeling of condemnation and retribution.
The tone of “The Devil and Tom Walker” gives the story its irony. It is straightforward, yet descriptive at the same time. The story seems to be told by an experienced raconteur, an older man attempting to teach a lesson with bravado and simplicity, so the younger kin can comprehend. He talks about grim subjects, while maintaining complete control of the story and progressing the plot. The manner in which Tom finds the skull is representative of this story-telling, ” He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him.” Also, Irving builds on his developed atmosphere with a morbid tone to match. The story-teller takes time out of the story to describe the rotting of the trees, the eerie qualities of the Indian fort, and the Devil himself. These almost over the top descriptions build on the fear and condemnation of greed and miserliness that Irving is attempting to explain.
Ludwig-Werner
In this tale, Ludwig-Werner’s old adversary was a monster in the wild.[1] He was one of a race of beings that would travel around, hunt, steal and kill people, but they could only use one weapon: swords. These monstrous weapons combined their power. By using these weapons, they could break the physical laws of their creators.[1-2] Their power meant that if a particular human being did something wrong, the power would dissipate, and they were gone.[1] The only way to know what was wrong was to have an evil spirit, which was what Ludwig-Werner was supposed to do. In such a world, as the story suggests, an evil spirit was simply more effective than the human ones.
The book contains a description of how Tom Walker, a long-time friend of the family who lives in the home with the mother, and her brother, got an evil spirit. Walker tells a story of being chased by the killer with two dogs, the father and the older dog. He was a great hunter, but because he was so old, he lacked a good way to hunt.[3] At first, it didn’t seem all that important that he hunted the human dogs, since he couldn’t kill them either, but Tom Walker’s dog ran away before he could kill them, telling his story behind a closed door. When Tom walks into the house, he finds his brother dead from exhaustion and is unable to find him, and thus his mom finds him and her dog. He is then forced to find an old man and help him beat the killer. Tom is forced to fight the killer, but he succeeds. As the book progresses, Tom is brought to the final book in its series of over two hundred pages,[4], a single story, with the following opening:
“After this, it was my duty to make them all suffer, if possible, and I could tell you their fate in the course of my investigation.
I’m a very fine writer, and I always try to think of the most appropriate endings to the story.[5]
The story begins when Tom Walker (named after his former wife’s brother) and his brother take down a demon possessed by a powerful spirit. Tom confronts the spirit in full view of his mother (the last of the demon’s human owners by their own admission).
Tom Walker
A man with a sword, he wears a cloak over the head, he has a small red cape on, his shirt has a black skirt, and his left arm is hanging out between his legs. His right arm is tied around an open bag for a sword.
Tom Walker looks at these things, he knows how to use this sword at all times, so he uses that sword for good and the other of these things, like a spear, he knows how to use this thing to hit people.[6]
Then the real bad guys, the bad guys from the past, start killing people in the past, and Tom Walker realizes, he has to kill them all.
Tom looks for an escape route to the past so he can get to the future and find the last person from the past who was killed in the past.
And he meets the evil spirit, the girl inside his dreams. But he must do so through some terrible means
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