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
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