Irving uses his distinct description to describe the swamp area of Charles Bay. "The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high...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, where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire." Irvings description of the swamp leaves the reader without a doubt that evil

Irving continued his description of key scenes in the story. "On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great man of the colony." At this point the story has reached its climax, evil has arrived and death was imminent. The devil had engraved the name of every important man in the colony. This is important because Deacon Peabody would later die, giving Tom a hint that the names on the trees would too follow in Deacon Peabody's footsteps. From Irving's description of the surrounding environment, the reader has a sense of what is going on in the story and also has a sense of what is to come in the future. A prime example of how the reader has a sense of what is to come in the future is when Tom's wife sets off to the swamp area, by herself, in search for the devil. She is following is Tom's footsteps and traveling through the swamp where it is imminent that she will encounter the devil. Till this day, nobody knows for sure what the fate of Tom's wife was, but to the reader has a good idea that the devil had gotten the best of her. As the story develops further, Tom makes a deal with the devil and Tom becomes a usurer, who is a person that lends money, and charges an unusual or unlawfully high rate of interest. Tom has set out a deal with the devil so th

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 978
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)