The Devil and Tom Walker

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The Devil and Tom Walker

• Washington Irving

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Objectives

• To develop vocabulary and word identification
  skills
• To use a variety of reading strategies to
  comprehend a short story
• To connect common elements across cultures
• To express and support responses to the text
• To analyze literary elements
• To increase the knowledge of the rules of grammar
  and language

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Washington Irving

• Born into a wealthy family
• Planned to be a lawyer
• Published a humorous magazine at 24
• Toured Europe from 1815-1832
• Inspired and influenced by European customs,
  traditions, and folklore
• Wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van
  Winkle (adapted from two German folktales)

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Thematic Focus Fireside/Campfire Tales
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Reading Strategy

• Cultural attitudes
• Revealed in story
• Characters indicate ideology (way of thinking or
  perceiving the world)
• Make Predictions
• Make predictions or inferences based on dialogue
• Draw conclusion based on details provided
• Archetype
• A repeated pattern

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Literary Focus

• Mood
• The overall feeling or atmosphere of a story,
  play or poem
• Usually indicated by the setting, word choice or
  plot
• Theme
• The insight about human life that is revealed in
  a literary work
• Rarely stated usually implied or inferred
• Theme is different from the subject
• Symbolism
• A person, place, thing or event that has a
  meaning in itself and stands for something more

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Vocabulary

• Avarice greed
• Usurers moneylenders who charge a very high
  interest rate
• Extort to obtain by threat or violence
• Ostentation boastful display
• Parsimony stinginess
• Superfluous more than is needed or wanted
  useless
• Resolute determined resolved unwavering
• Obliterate erase or destroy
• Melancholy sad gloomy
• Impregnable impossible to capture or enter by
  force
• Precarious uncertain insecure risky
• Stagnant not flowing or moving

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Critical Reading

• The opening description suggest something
  treacherous
• The unmentioned condition is Toms agreement to
  give his soul to the Devil
• The great men of the colony also made pacts with
  the Devil (names on the tree)
• Tom is a one dimensional character motivated by
  greed

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Critical Reading

• Although Toms condition changed, he remained the
  same greedy, stingy person (house)
• The story implies that God causes natural
  disasters to express his disapproval of man
  (fire, storm)
• New England Puritans of that time believed in
  witches and spirits (unsurprised by Toms
  abduction)
• New England Puritans were very suspicious of
  sudden converts