Religious Themes In 'The Devil And Tom Walker'

American literature has gone through many different eras, from the beautiful words in Romanticism to the down to eat style of Realism to the random and very diverse Post Modern era. Each movement was impacted by certain philosophies and themes, some themes that carry through most of the eras are religion, relationships and death. Religion had originally a theme that was written with high praise, tend to be written with criticism in American stories. Relationships had proven that love isn’t always as beautiful as people think and death has always taken over plots throughout American stories. All of these themes traveled throughout most of the literary eras of the United States. Religion has been a very important factor in America’s history, it’s not surprising that religion is often used in literature. From early american era to post modern, religious themes show up in stories all the time. Although, belief is not always praised in the stories, some critizies or abuse the use of religion. “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving is a great example of abusing
religion. The story has Tom Walker being a greedy man who decides to make a deal with the devil, but when it comes near time for his death, Tom acts religious, thinking it will save him. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t save him, but that’s not the point the Irving is getting at. Irving points out how Tom is only pretending to be religious to make it seem like his sins don’t mean anything and it makes him a better man. People will often use their belief in God as a way to make them feel less guilty about the awful things they may do. Irving shows Tom being an awful man to other people but talks about he is a wonderful man of faith, yet in the end the Devil still takes him away. During the Realism Era, authors really brought down spirituality due to the civil war that had happened, making many people think that God was dead. Mark Twain's story, “The War Prayer” focused on the hypocrisy of religion. Twain compares two prayers, the prayer which the people of the church are saying, and the same prayer but with a much more brutal phrasing. The original prayer ends with, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and protector of our land and flag!” (Twain 1). This prayer sounds like a community just trying to get their people back home from war safely, but then a stranger walks to the front and re-words their prayer to show them what it actually is saying. “O Lord, our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover the smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the sheiks of the wounded, writing in pain…” (Twain 2), not only does the stranger show what the effects of wishing victory of war means, but shows the brutality of war. In the very end, Twain writes how the people called him a lunatic and how his words couldn’t make any sense because no one wanted to accept the fact that they were prayer for the death of many people. American literature tends to be rather critical of spirituality, but there are some authors who finds God to be a very important aspect of life. Flannery O’Connor, a self-proclaimed orthodox catholic, would write about the moment of grace, showing how religion is very impactful. “The Lame Shall Enter First” tells the story of Sheppard, a man who shuns religion, and his journey to prove that he is the only one that can make the world a better. Unfortunately, Sheppard tries to do this by helping a child that doesn’t want help while ignoring his son, Norton, who is still grieving for the loss of his mother. After being told about heaven and hell and reading some of the bible himself, Norton decides to kill himself believing that this was the only way to be his mother again. When Sheppard finds him, he finally realizes that he cannot control everything, he wasn’t the all powerful one that could save the world. Although religion is often ridiculed in american stories, it is also shown to be a major importance in society through other authors perspectives.
Although many just assume that when someone is together it means love, but many american stories talk about the bad in relationships shown in many different ways.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” shows how quickly a relationship can change, like overnight as it does for Goodman Brown and Faith. After going through the woods and meeting several people from his town do things that seem “evil,” he finds that Faith was led to the same place. Seeing that the situation seemed to some type of sinful event, he calls to Faith to “Look up to Heaven, and resist the wicked one.” (Hawthorne 8). Right after crying out to Faith he finds himself alone in the woods again, and when he travels back to town, he finds everyone that had been at the ritual and becomes distrustful of everyone. Brown even turns away from Faith, turning what was once a loving relationship to Brown being very distant to
everyone.
“Eve’s Diary,” by Mark Twain, is Twain’s reimagining of the story of Adam and Eve through Eve’s eyes. Eve likes to wonder the new world she had suddenly appeared in, and looks for the beauty in everything. Then there is Adam who only seems to care about shelter and food and survival rather than Eve and his own feelings. Eve gets frustrated with him often when she finds something new and pretty but he doesn’t appreciate it like she does. Even when Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit and Adam had confessed to God that it was her, Eve still loved him. Although she confessed that perhaps the only reason she loves Adam is because he is male and she is female. They had a very one-sided relationship that Eve seemed to care about more than Adam. The feminist writer, Kate Chopin, often wrote about relationships. Although Chopin often didn’t shun relationships, she definitely wrote about some awful couples. “Désirée’s Baby” is a perfect example of an awful abusive relationship. When Désirée, a white woman, has a child with black skin, she is accused to be black by her husband. He becomes cruel to her and shuns her for the false accusation of her being black until she leaves with the baby and drowns themselves in the swamp. In the end, it’s revealed that Désirée was not the one with black lineage but her husband that had treated her so terribly.
Relationships typically written to be a “happily ever after” at the end in today’s society. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, decided to write about every possible outcome in a relationship. Her story, “Happy Endings,” focuses on the couple John and Mary, the first outcome is happy, the perfect ending that everyone wants. Then the next ending, Mary loves John but John doesn’t care about her, he simply uses her until she kills herself, hoping John would find her before she dies, but he never does and he finds someone else and marries them. Then the next ending, John loves Mary but Mary is much younger and only pities him so she sleeps with him. One day a man named James comes by and Mary and him have sex and John finds them, then kills all of them. And each story progresses from there. The only thing constant in the relationships is: “John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.” (Atwood 3). Atwood shows how relationships can end happily, but more often than not, relationships turn sour and can be ruined easily. The most written about theme is death. Death is seen as a very big deal in America, this caused the theme to be so popular among authors. Although death can be used as a representation of something, death is typically shown as an almighty force that is mysterious, sudden and unstoppable. Edgar Allen Poe is a very famous author known for writing about death. Rather from comparing it to the state of mind or the actual effect of it, death was Poe’s favorite topic to write about. “The Masque of the Red Death” deals with the inevitability of death. A kingdom is dying of an awful plague, so the prince throws a big party and locks the gates to hide from it. Of course, this doesn’t stop the illness from appearing at the ball in a personified appearance of a red-cloaked person. When the Prince sees the cloaked person, he tries to catch him but instead is killed instantly, and the rest of the party goers quickly die as well, unable to out run death. “The Open Boat,” written by Stephen Crane, is the story of a Cook, an Oiler (or Billie), a Correspondent and the Captain who all just got in a row boat after their ship sank and are now trying to get rescued. As the men travel, Crane talked about all the men complaining while Billie kept rowing, but Crane also continuously saying Billie’s name while everyone else is never name. This is an attempted to get the reader to become more attached to Billie who in the end, ends up dead in the water. The men are finally seen and are being rescued but the row boat suddenly tosses the men out of it and Billie starts to fight against the current to get to shore while the rest of the men wait by the boat, accepting whatever happens. Billie tried to fight for his life, trying to take control of the situation, but death doesn’t care who you are, how kind you are, or how strong. Death always wins in the end. When a writer, named Harry, gets a cut and develops gangrene in Ernest Hemingway's story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” he know the end is near for him. He begins to regret all that he had neglected to do, like applying iodine to his scratch before it turned to gangrene for example. Harry thinks about all of the other things that he had procrastinated to do, like all of his story ideas, which will now never be told. He asks for a drink, something else he had been waiting to have and decided he wasn’t going to miss that opportunity, but he wife tries to stop. His wife is trying to keep him alive as long as possible to hopefully save him, she’s trying to procrastinate his death, but Harry finally understands that it’s pointless to try and put off what was going to eventually happen, like death.