Horror And Violence In American Literature

Throughout American literature, many writers have used the subject of horror and violence within the many styles of writing during this time. The topics of Horror and Violence have been seen during slavery where it was expressed through story and autobiography about the brutal punishments of slave ship, kidnapping and beatings from the slave owners to slaves. We have also seen the use of Horror and Violence in more storytelling styles of writing where the writer writes about unrealistic topics to in a sense to scare or bring the feeling of fear to the reader. Horror and Violence has been see many times throughout the span of American Literature in writing such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The Devil and Tom Walker,
This particularly new style of writing was first introduced around the time the story of, “The Devil and Tom Walker” was written. This is a fictional story of a man named Tom Walker who come in contact with the devil. During this time that the story is being written and published the controversy of religion, slavery and the idea of the devil is still a large topic being spoken about amongst people. The story begins by introducing the readers to Tom Walker and his quite crazy wife. Tom and his wife live in the middle of a dead swamp in a small house that is at the edge of death itself. Tom and his wife have a record of verbal and physical abuse, where the wife occasionally beats Tom. One day, while walking through the woods where Tom lived he found a skull in the ground with a Tomahawk located in the forehead. “He raked it out of the vegetable mound, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The ruston the weapon showed time that has elapsed since this death blow has been given.” (Irving 9) Immediately this startled Tom but also made him wonder, what might have happened to this man. While wondering this, a dark, somewhat scary man who was called; the Devil appeared to Tom Walker. The devil then offered Tom a large amount of gold; which happen to be hidden treasure, in exchange for Tom’s soul. “...his attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree he looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife’s apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.” (Irving 35) Tom declines the Devils offer, but when his wife finds out, she attempts to sell Tom’s soul herself. Later that day, Tom goes searching for his wife, and