devil. In fact, Irving includes tongue-in-cheek parodying of folktale "authenticity" when he writes of one version of the story:

This, however, is probably a mere old wives’ fable. If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend; which closes his story in the following manner.

Finally, the opening of the story, with its detailed description of a foreboding natural setting, is Romantic in its emphasis on nature and on the effects of nature on human emotions. Most often in Romanticism, nature is associated with God and seen as an expression of divine goodness, but in this case, the twisted nature of the gloomy swamp and "treacherous forest" Tom enters mirrors the way it has been taken over by demonic forces.

Washington's story has to do with Tom Walker, a rural New Englander, and his chance meeting with the devil at an abandoned fort one day. Walker sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the whereabouts of buried treasure left in the woods by Captain Kidd, the pirate.

The story has several Romantic elements:

• The story deals with events in a mythic past. Kidd's treasure is more legend than fact, and the early days of settling the country have a similar storybook quality
• The presence of the devil suggests that the fort is a kind of magic, supernatural place, and it is said that the Native Americans sacrificed humans to the devil there
• The woods and swamp are contrasted with Tom's house and domestic arrangements. Nature is the site of mystery and forbidden, hidden knowledge, while Tom's house is simply the place where he argues with his wife
• Even though Tom and his wife are very hardheaded when it comes to money, Tom's experience with the devil represents a triumph of emotion—his desire to find the hidden gold but also to gain the upper hand against his wife—over reason. A rational man would question the wisdom of making a deal with the devil, and in fact the whole scenario of meeting an evil spirit in the woods is fundamentally irrational.

Dark Romanticism is a form of literature that uses the mysterious and dark settings characteristic of Romanticism as a whole in ways that are often threatening and scary. Dark Romantic settings are Gothic in nature--that is, they involve the use of horror and are threatening in nature. Dark Romanticism also seeks to expose the darkness or sins inherent in all humans.

"The Devil and Tom Walker" contains elements of Dark Romanticism, as the setting of the story is a threatening place described as "a thickly wooded swamp, or morass" where the devil himself reigns. The setting is gloomy and isolated, and there Tom Walker lives in isolation, as "no traveler stopped at its door." Instead, Tom's house is steeped in darkness and mystery, and the swamp nearby ruled by the darkness of nature:

"The swamp was...a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud."

A characteristic of Romanticism is a rejection of organized religion. Tom Walker's conversion to vigorous Christianity in his schemes to cheat the devil shows off the worst of organized religion when Tom "talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists."

The incorporation of supernatural elements is commonly found in Romantic literature. The fact that the devil plays a prominent role in the story meets this criterion. When the devil makes himself known to him, Tom conjectures "you are he commonly called Old Scratch." The devil confirms Tom's surmise, answering "the same, at your service!"

Romantic literature is also characterized by an interest in the past. Though the story was published in the 1820s, Irving sets it during the colonial period, during the years of the Great Awakening. Tom is living near Boston at the tail end of the Puritan era, and the narrator describes it as "about the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees"—referring to the (ultimately failed) Puritan revival movement.

Another example of Irving's interest in the past is his evocation of the legend of "a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate" in the swamp that Tom cuts through on his way home. William Kidd was a notorious seventeenth-century Scottish pirate.

The story seems to me in many ways to be anti-Romantic: the solitary man does not find solace or comfort when alone in nature, for example, and there is little interest in the character of the wife. Still, the story does have at least one aspect that is very much in keeping with Romanticism; the story (much like Irving's other stories, including "Rip Van Winkle") is essentially a transplantation of the European (or German) fairy tale onto American soil. Romanticism is the period of nation-building, particulary in younger and only recently unified or independent countries, such as Germany and the United States.

I haven't given you any quotations, I know -- and I apologize for that -- but I hope that these comments may be helpful to you nonetheless.

In broadest strokes, Romantic literature presents the world as we would like it to be, while realistic literature presents the world as it is.

Most people wish for the world to be more than a dull, prosaic, mechanistic place. Irving's story leans in heavily to the human desire for the fantastical, the primitive, and the supernatural. Readers are drawn into the story by such images as:

a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him.

This mysterious skull leads Tom to an encounter with the devil himself. Folklore was very much a part of Romantic literature, and Irving spends the rest of the story weaving in local folktales to tell a moral fable of Tom's history after he makes his deal with the devil.

Romantic literature also depicted the civilized world as corrupted and far from God, and the story plays on that theme. Wealth is not admired but despised. We hear, for example, of

a mighty rich man ... who made a vulgar display of wealth.

The Romantics preferred the simplicity of nature to what they saw as the garish evils of civilization.

Tom Walker's deal with the devil plants him firmly in the heart of a corrupt civilization that cheats and hurts the little people. Tom charges unreasonable rates of interest to desperate souls who are in financial trouble, and he has no heart or conscience about seizing their property when they cannot repay the loans. As the Romantics were on the side of the common folk and against the greed of the world, Irving shows his Romanticism in condemning Tom for his behavior.

Finally, if the Romantics wanted to depict the world as we wish it to be, justice is a clear desire of most people. The story fulfills our yearning for justice, with Tom duly punished for his misdeeds.

Part of the idea behind Romanticism was to explore the inner nature of man.  Here, the whole story focuses on the inner nature of Tom Walker.  We see his struggle with his own greed and ambition, and we see the negative consequences when he loses that struggle.  We also see his reaction to fear, how he turns to a religion he doesn't even believe in so that he might save himself before death. 

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious.... He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.

Another element of Romanticism was a celebration of nature and a focus on how nature co-existed with humanity.  This is shown throughout the story in the description of the woods where Tom met the Devil.  The description detailed so as to "bring it to life", and it starts in the first paragraph:

On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size.

The land rising shows personification, giving human qualities to nature.

Finally, Romanticism used fantastical - or supernatural - details to emphasize the spirituality of the human.  This is shown in the appearance/disappearance of the Devil, and that later disappearance of Tom.

A love of the paranormal or supernatural is also a key element in Romanticism. 

In "The Devil and Tom Walker" there are several events which qualify as unexplainable beyond a shadow of a doubt or strange and eery.  One of these is the legend of the hidden pirate treasure and the other is the old Indian fort nearby where Tom and his wife live.  Both of these factors hold the people's interest and intrigue their imaginations based on the lure of treasure and the strange and unfamiliar Indian ceremonies and burial grounds.

Another is the disappearance of his wife who was never seen or heard from again.  The only thing found to explain her whereabouts was her apron hanging from a tree containing a heart and liver.

Of course, the Devil is also a source of intrigue.  In this story both Tom and his wife act out of greed to "strike a bargain" with the Devil and toy with the supernatural in doing so.  Tom evidently has a change of heart and attempts to go back on his deal.  When the Devil calls to collect his soul, Tom is mysteriously swept away toward the Indian burial grounds on a striking black horse and is never heard from again. 

Tom Walker addresses a typical setting and theme of American Romanticism. As the young nation matured, the woods became symbolic of individualism, passionate self-discovery that moved past the book learning of now crowded cities. The woods changed from a threatening place of danger to life, limb and soul (just ask the folks in Salem). Man was left in the woods surrounded by nature to investigate his own being and moral makeup. Here Tom Walker faces his insatiable greed and does not learn his lesson.

A typical theme of American Romanticism would involve man’s weakness for easy wealth and cruelty to others. Slavery, spousal disharmony, greed and sloth are portrayed in this cautionary tale. Romanticism moved us into a new mode of thought, but obviously the traditional American work ethic was to be preserved.

There isn't much mention made of the Christian religion, specifically, in this story. The Devil is treated more as a folk character and force of nature, possibly because Irving took inspiration from German folktales during this phase of his career, and those stories inherent much from pagan myths. 

Some religious elements that are mentioned are the implication that Tom, like all humans, has a soul, and that the Devil is in charge of "damning" and "burning" sinners, as indicated by the symbolic trees in the swamp with the names of prominent men on them.

The most specific mention of religion that is made concerns Tom's supposed reformation in old age, where he begins attending church regularly and with great zeal, and he begins reading a Bible regularly. Some relevant quotes here include:

The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly traveling Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert.

This indicates that the regular churchgoers, rather than truly seeing Tom for the sham that he is, are somewhat ashamed that they don't appear nearly as devout as he is. 

Another significant religious reference;

He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists.

This is a reference to the practices of the Puritan culture which preceded the current one, and dominated the majority of Massachusetts society for about 50 years in the 1600s. Quakers and Anabaptists were Christian sects that the Puritans outlawed, and believed to be heretical.

Individualism in the Romantic genre had much to do with the changing social and economic dynamics of the time. Previously, political, economic and religious conditions limited the spread of new ideas and knowledge, the movement of people, and the social mobility that we take for granted today. Part of the Romantic movement was the idea of "finding oneself", fulfilling a destiny, or otherwise moving beyond artificial limitations imposed by human conventions.

In "The Devil and Tom Walker", this is alluded to through Tom's elevation from miserable recluse to dapper man-about-town, yet the message lies in the fact that Tom did nothing to truly earn his new status, and that it did nothing to improve his moral character; in fact it probably made him worse. 

Irving is probably reflecting upon the Romantic idea that anyone could "make themselves", and is cautioning that in doing so we do not cut bargains and make concessions which undermine our humanity and damn us, because social mobility is less important than living a wholesome life. It also seems to suggest a contrary moral; that to some degree, "we are what we are", and Tom is an innately bad person, which no amount of individualism can change or disguise.