The Devil and Tom Walker Reflection

For our reflection today we had to read two literary pieces from the romanticism period. The two pieces were titld The Devil and Tom Walker and Rip Van Winkle. After reading these two pieces and also all the other romanticism pieces I had read previously I saw that the two pieces were pretty similair. Washington Irving was a non fiction writer of short stories. In his stories I think he uses a lot of creativity and imagination. He does this by being extremely descriptive with his writing. Being descriptive is also a characteristic of a romanticism piece, so it does not really come to a surprise that he does so. The story The Devil and Tom Walker is actually a pretty simple story that probably would not of been too long if it was not so descriptive. But because it was so descriptive it took him about ten pages to tell the story. This is an example of Irving writing with a lot of discription, a classic characteristic of a Romanticism writer. I am not a huge fan of a lot of discription, but Irving does make it a lot easier for a reader to get the scene and setting pretty clear in your head. You can just picture it a lot better. An example of this from the story is when Irving is describing the remains that are left at the Indian fort, he says, "“Nothing remained of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the level of the earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp. (Irving 243)” This was very wordy and could of simply been said as there was nothing left but a few remains that were sinking into the ground. All of his writing was pretty drawn out and lengthy to give more discription.

The story Rip Van Winkle was about a man who wakes up after takinga twenty year "nap" i guess you could call it, and then he realizes that everything has changed(Watts). Obviously everything has changed, it has been twenty years...There is a whole new setting after the twenty years and Washington Irving writes about the setting also in a very descriptive wordy way. Irving writes, “On awaking, he found himself on the green knoll from whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft and breasting the pure mountain breeze. “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.’” Irving pretty much shares everything that Rip could have been seeing. This much like the other story is very descriptive, but that is how the literature of this time period is supposed to be. He was very descriptive, which is why he is classified as a romanticism writer.


Irving, Washington. "The Devil and Tom Walker." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 240-250. Print.

Matthews, Washington Irving. "4. Rip Van Winkle By Washington Irving. Matthews, Brander. 1907. The Short-Story." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More. Web. 05 Dec. 2011.

Watts, Linda S. "'Rip Van Winkle'." Encyclopedia of American Folklore. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
Both pieces we read I think exemplified the Romanticism period quite well. They were extremely discriptive, a little too discriptive at times, and there was a youthful tie into also there was talk of nature as a mentioned previously talking of the indian remains sinking into the ground.