valuable.
valuable.
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good look out to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again.…
Selling one’s soul to the devil is an archetypal theme as old as time itself. In the story The Devil and Tom Walker as well as in the movie Snow White and the Huntsman, Tom Walker and Queen Raveena are motivated by greed.…
“Literature opens a dark window on the soul, revealing more about what is bad in human nature than what is good” is what someone once said. In other words, authors tend to focus more on the bad in humans, rather than the good. Two perfect examples to prove this true are Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Road to Miclantecutli” by Adobe James.…
For example, In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist Montag decides to be an outcast by "not burning books". This dystopian society believes literature can sway people's thinking. This book portrays how literature survived because people wanted to know about the past and would fight to keep this form of expression…
The Devil and Tom Walker is a story that has been passed down from generation to generation. This story is about a man by the name of Tom Walker, who believes that wealth and worldly possessions are everything. He is married to a woman that beats him, and she could care less about him or his existence. Tom and his wife are cheap, greedy, manipulative people. They will cheat each other out of anything that will benefit themselves. One day, Tom decides to take a shortcut through the woods to get home. He meets a man that offers him a deal that he simply cannot pass up, but before he decides to take the man upon this deal he takes some time to think it through. When he has finally made up his mind that this is what he wants to do, he takes a trip back to the man and agrees to his offer. The offer requires him to do certain things for this man, but nothing that he is not willing to do. So, as Tom continues life without his wife, he lies to people and cheats them out of their money all because of the deal he made with this mysterious man in the woods. As days pass on, Tom begins to worry about what will happen to him in his after life. With this curiosity, he begins to act as if he is a frequent churchgoer. But, in the end, his effort to “get right” with God does not work, and he is taken captive by the Devil.…
"Literature opens a dark window on the soul, revealing more about what is bad in human nature than what is good." This quote means that literature will show all sides to a person not just their good side. It will show how evil a person maybe even though they may seem nice. I would have to agree with this quote because in the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Macbeth was once a noble man but the powers of greed made his true side come out. In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willie the main character may look like a nice guy but deep down inside he is a very troubled man.…
“In literature, evil often triumphs, but never conquers” in famous novels like “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson or “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. The evil is considered the major issues brought upon the protagonists by the antagonists (when comparing these two novels), such as the character of Andy Evans in Speak and Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird. However, the protagonists always found a way to conquer with the good, and will always shine brighter than the evil.…
"The picture of Dorian Gray" is morality, and how it can be influenced. The main characters in C.…
Some novels and plays portray the consequences that occur when individuals pursue their own personal good at the expense of the common good of the group or society. Choose a novel or play, and write a well-organized essay that explains how the interests of a character or group of characters conflict with the common good and produce dire consequences for another group or society. Avoid plot summary.…
The following quote, “Literature opens a dark window on the soul, revealing more about what is bad inhuman nature than what is good,” which was stated by an anonymous…
This story, told by Washington Irving, was about a greedy man who made a deal with The Devil for money. The characters are Tom Walker, his wife, the narrator, Old Scratch (the devil incarnate), and Governor Belcher (governor of the colony) are the main characters. Washington Irving used this story to reflect how selfish and greedy people were in New England in the 1720’s. The people were willing to do anything just to be rich. The story didn’t necessarily shape the time period he lived in; the story more reflected what was going on in New England at the time.…
What is a romantic novel, and what characteristics make it romantic? Well, in the early 1800s, there were two type of thinkers in the world, the rationalist, and the romantics. Some romantic novels include The Devil In Tom Walker by Washington Irving, The Devil In Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét, and The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. The rationalist flocked to large cities where they loved the innovation of industry and the production of new ideas and technology. However, the romantics were quite different. The romantics believed in the beauty, innocence, nature, and imagination. Instead of seeing the positives to large cities, the romantics only saw the poverty, disease, pollution, pain, and suffering. The romantics also believed that there was the dull realities of our world, then there was the supernatural realm, this was where everyone dreamed of being. In these short stories one can see that all of the main characters are struggling with their dull life and proceed to try to alter it for the better. However, when one tries to…
As a child, everyone is guilty of stealing the last cookie or snatching their favorite colored marker to draw with. This is human instinct, but it is not for survival anymore. Repercussions such as timeout time are often just around the corner after these actions. This greedy acquisition of material goods met with consequences can be attributed to karma. Washington Irving, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Edgar Allen Poe demonstrate these ideas of karma in their respective books, The Devil and Tom Walker, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and The Masque of the Red Death. Romantics value intuition and feeling in order to reach self realization in contrast to rationalists’ value of reason and goods to create a better life. In romantics eyes self realization…
Scott Fitzgerald, is another great example of this. The characters that Fitzgerald were created to show how corrupted the American Dream was. Many of the characters, such as Jay Gatsby, who corrupted his way to the top by selling alcohol during times when it was illegal to do so, represented this corruptness. He committed all these crimes just to become wealthy and gain the attention of Daisy, the actual American Dream. The American Dream was meant, as mentioned above, was about working hard that through hard work and determination one can achieve great success with an equal opportunity. Many Americans did not do that, many achieved their wealth through other methods, maybe by lying or cheating their way to it. Greed comes hand in hand with corruption as the two represented many Americans at that time. The Great Gatsby can also be used to represent this. Daisy Buchanan was enamored with the idea of wealth that she didn’t think about her happiness. She knew she wasn’t happy with Tom but she stayed with him because of the wealth he had. The reason why Daisy persuaded the idea of having an affair with Jay Gatsby was not because of “love” it was because he had things to offer to her (more…
* A proper moral of the story will teach that good people meet good ends and bad men meet bad ends [613d-614a] — but tragic poets have will often have bad men profit and protagonists fail and suffer despite their virtues [392b].…