Dark Romanticism in “The Devil and Tom Walker” Essay

During the nineteen century in America, d stimulatecast Romanticism was very popular. morose Romanticism is a literary subgenre that emerges from transcendentalism. Transcendentalism believed that to disc over truth people essential see beyond the physical world, to a fault believed that people can find divinity directly on nature. evil love affair explores the conflict between neat and ugliness and the psychological effect of sin and crime in the human race mind. one(a) of the celebrated Dark romantic writers is Washington Irving. He is well known for his short stories and his phantasmagorical characters and his point in timeed description of nature. Irving develops the characteristic stem turns of hidden romanticism through symbolism in The Devil and Tom carriage. legion(predicate) Dark romantics writer thought that nature had a spiritual influence over people, as a mysterious being. One of the main themes of the Dark Romanticism is nature. Irving describes wit h detail the nature compass around the characters.In this story Irving says The swamp was thickly braggart(a) with vast gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them 90 feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat for all the owls of the contiguity. In this sentence he is describing the setting described as dark, decaying and mystifying. An some other theme rangeed in this story is the presence of the demigod. Irving gives the have words human qualities and describes him as a enceinte black man, neither pitch blackness nor Indian, with a pair of great red eyes and with an ax in his shoulder. The devil is give tongue to to have assorted names among the countries and he claims to have retrieve great battles and conflicts in America. Dark Romantics use images of evil in form of vampires, devils, ghosts and other human-characterized figures. In this case Irving uses the devil as a symbol of evil. Dark Romantics presents human beings as susceptible to sin. The author pr esents various sins in this story for example, avarice.This sin was present in Tom Walker and similarly in his wife. In the story it said that the husband was continually prying fair virtually to detect her secret hoards and there were conflicts about what ought to have been common property. This says that the cleaning woman hid things to her husband, in order to save it from herself. Dark Romantics explore the conflict between good and evil. In this case the devil precious to make an agreement with Walker. At depression Walker refused because he knew that when devil disposed(p) favors, there was one condition he had to be at his service. The wanted him to sprain a slave trader, but he refused his proposal because he was against slavery. He alternatively became a usurer.When Tom Walker commit sins, he went to church to feel kick downstairs about it. These visits to church are a symbol used to present unrighteousness. He tried to focus in rendering the Bible, but he kept c ensuring his neighbors and scamming his clients. He thought that every sin his neighbors pull became a credit in his own sins. Also, Walker tried to hide his unrighteousness in his ostentation by build a great and incomplete category, just as Captain Kidd hid his treasure between the big trees in the forest. Washington Irving uses many a(prenominal) symbols in this story to present the themes of Dark Romanticism. The forest is a symbol of the nature, and the devil is representative of the evil influence over the human being. Walkers house represents a place to hide guilt and Walkers wife is a symbol of greed. The Devil and Tom Walker describes very well the themes of Dark Romanticism.