Summary:
"The Devil and Tom Walker" had an eerie mood created by the many creepy parts of the swampy setting. Irving was successful in portraying the perfect mood for the Devil's abode.
In most stories, with each event, there is a mood displayed through the setting. It can be good, bad, romantic, mysterious and much more. In the case of "The Devil and Tom Walker," the mood is eerie. The author, Washington Irving, uses explicit setting descriptions to create the perfect mood for his characters. The main setting, the swamp, creates an overall mood by forming visual and sensory images, triggering feelings with those images, and combining those feelings into the mood.
Irving provides the reader with an abundance of imagery in the story, especially when describing the main setting: the swamp. Part of the main focus is on that swamp, being that it is the terrible abode of the devil himself. The swamp was portrayed by Irving as "thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks...which made it dark at noonday," and "full of pits and quagmires...where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud." Just using the word "swamp" adds a smorgasbord of other descriptions. A swamp is often associated with: rot and decay, smelly, dirty, humid air, fallen trees, darkness, murky, diseased water, and other disgusting conditions. These detailed descriptions create images, so that when one reads them, their imagination pieces together the setting and they see the events play in their mind, similar to how a movie plays on a screen.
All of the images the setting presents trigger feelings within the reader. Because the setting is for the Devil, an evil being that plays as the ruler of hell and keeper of sinning souls, Irving purposely placed him in a swamp to trigger the negative and devilish feelings connected to that setting. A swamp is perfect for an evil being because it has images like darkness, disgusting water, fog, and black mud. When the reader experiences these images in their imagination during the story, they feel the fear from the darkness, the mystery from the murky water, and the repulsion from the mud.
Mood is defined as "the atmosphere of a setting and the feelings which it evokes;" meaning the feelings created from the images in the story combine together to make an overall atmosphere or mood. The reader, in their imagination, sees the fallen trees and decaying debris, the "dark and stagnant pools", and the "cloven skull...with an Indian Tomahawk buried in it." They feel the disgust for the mud, the fear of the dark, and the mystery from the fog. And as they look around at that dingy swamp, they feel the eerie mood being presented while watching Tom Walker make a deal with "Old Scratch."
"The Devil and Tom Walker" had an eerie mood created by the many creepy parts of the swampy setting. Irving was successful in portraying the perfect mood for the Devil's abode. But not all authors are so successful. A setting needs to have the right images to create the complete mood. Had Washington Irving placed the devil in a bright green field with candy trees and little children, it is certain the reader would not feel scared of the devil; rather, they would most likely laugh.
This is the complete article, containing 523 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
