"The Devil and Tom Walker," by Washington Irving, is a short story originally published in 1824, as a part of Irving's collection Tales of a Traveller. The story, which draws heavily on the German legend of Faust, is told by a frame narrator who is repeating a story that someone else told him. In this tale, a man named Tom Walker strikes a deal with the devil. In return for riches, Tom agrees to serve the devil's purposes while he lives and to give the devil his soul upon his death. Tom grows increasingly worried about the bargain he has made and vainly attempts to hide behind public piety as he plots to escape his bargain--the story thus illustrates the dangers of greed, hypocrisy, and corruption.
"The Devil and Tom Walker"
by Washington Irving
Washington truing was born to a wealthy family in New York on April 3, 1783. He spent almost twenty years of his life in Europe. Influenced by a move...
Read more
Considered the first professional man of letters in the United States, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect...
Read more
Considered the first professional man of letters in the United States, Washington Irving was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect for fledgli...
Read more
Washington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose stylist. As a wr...
Read more
At the outset of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall (1822) Geoffrey Crayon, the author's quasi-autobiographical persona, makes the following observation: "I have always had an opinion that much good...
Read more
Washington Irving , America's first professional man of letters, devoted the latter half of his productive career primarily to historical writing. Though best remembered in the twentieth century as an...
Read more
Washington Irving was so important a figure, so self-conscious a writer, and so given to romantic irony and satirizing authorship that the meagerness of his literary criticism and scholarship is disa...
Read more
The first American writer to be acclaimed as a literary figure of stature on both sides of the Atlantic, Washington Irving is today regarded as an important but obscure figure of American letters. D...
Read more
Washington Irving told an anecdote of his youth which shows both his propensity to delight in stories as well as his skepticism concerning them. A "lively boy, full of curiosity, of easy faith, and p...
Read more
Washington Irving, America's first successful professional man of letters, was an essayist, humorist, historian, literary critic, antiquarian scholar, magazine journalist, and short-story writer. In a...
Read more
Washington Irving, America's first professional man of letters, won his international reputation in the 1820s as a literary cosmopolitan, an interpreter especially of English and Spanish character, cu...
Read more
"I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle & frenchhorn," Washington Irving said in an 1819 letter. While his flute music for a time wa...
Read more
Biography EssayWashington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose s...
Read more
The American Romantic Period is clearly represented in the literature of Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker."
The rural setting displayed in this story shows how the piece can be ...
Read more
Edmund Burke's concept, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," is supported in the short story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," because the good men in the town ...
Read more
Washington Irving, the author of "Tom Walker and The Devil" uses his main character, Tom Walker to play the important role of being the protagonist. Tom Walker is proved to be greedy, daring, and cou...
Read more
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....
Read more
"The Devil and Tom Walker"
Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irving
