Analysis Of The Devil And Tom Walker And The Minister's Black Veil
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During the late eighteenth century, a new literary movement was born which focused on embracing individuality and emphasized imagination and emotions. Numerous literary pieces have visible Romantic qualities throughout the eighteenth century. Two prominent literary pieces with Romantic qualities present in their text are The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving and The Minister 's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Through their respective texts the author 's portray the Romantic qualities of human nature, the supernatural, and individual freedom in unique ways, but use them to contribute to the intended meaning of the stories. The Devil and Tom Walker and The Minister 's Black Veil convey the Romantic quality of human nature to be innately evil and greedy. Washington Irving uses both Tom Walker and his wife to depict the greed and evilness within human nature. On Tom 's way home he meets a stranger, the Devil, in the woods who told him that if he agreed to a deal with all the conditions, then he would give him Kidd the Pirate 's treasure. After telling his wife she, "urged her husband to comply with the black mans term and secure what would make them wealthy for life" (Irving 233). After this she goes to collect the money for only herself, which shows that humans are innately greedy and are willing to comply with evil in order to become rich. The overall message in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Minister 's Black Veil is also that humans are innately evil in some way.