29 pages • 58 minutes read
Stephen Vincent BenétThe Devil and Daniel Webster
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cross Corners
The fact that the story takes place in a town called Cross Corners, New Hampshire, alludes to the symbolic significance of crossroads in stories that involve a pact with the devil. A crossroad in literature typically indicates that the protagonist faces a decision; in deal-with-the-devil narratives, such intersections are frequently where the pact is made. In Benét’s story, “Cross Corners” symbolizes both the choice between accepting Scratch’s terms or rejecting them and the “crossroads” between the natural and supernatural worlds.
The Pocketbook
“The Devil and Daniel Webster” draws on a tradition of depicting the devil as a money-lender. “Usury,” or charging interest on a loan, was considered a sin in medieval Christian Europe, and even as the practice became more common with the rise of capitalism, the association never entirely fell away. In fact, Benét’s Scratch much more closely resembles a modern banker than a medieval money-lender, and the persistent references to his deal with Stone as a “mortgage” underscore the parallels.
In this context, Scratch’s pocketbook—a place to keep money, checks, etc.—has symbolic significance. Scratch’s pocketbook contains not only his contracts with various individuals but also their souls; during one of Scratch’s conversations with Stone, the soul of Stone’s neighbor slips out of the pocketbook and begs for Stone’s help. The pocketbook thus contributes to the story’s anti-capitalist critique and its broader depiction of The Devil in America; Benét depicts a devil who tempts people with promises of success and then imprisons them within their debt.
The Jury
Scratch’s jury of the damned does not take up much narrative space but plays a vital role in the story’s outcome. Made up of characters from America’s past Benét’s readers would have considered vile, Scratch’s jury consists mostly of men who in some way threatened the survival of the US (or the colonies that would become the US)—e.g., the pirate Blackbeard, who blockaded Charlestown, South Carolina, or Walter Butler, who led a campaign on behalf of the British cause during the American Revolution, culminating in a massacre of women and children. As enemies of the state, they are particularly fitting opponents for Webster, whose guiding principle is maintaining the Union. Reverend John Hathorne, who presided over the earliest of the Salem Witch trials, serves as judge and embodies the perversion of the US justice system, developing the theme of The Nature of Justice.
Despite their connection with Scratch, the story suggests that these men were in some way vital to shaping Webster’s America. The jury is eventually persuaded by Webster, who “admit[s] all the wrong that had ever been done. But he show[s] how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors” (8). Much like Benét’s depiction of patriotism broadly, the moment is ambiguous. The jurors may, repenting, take pride in the idea that their actions have indirectly contributed to a “better” America, but it is also possible that they simply rejoice in this opportunity to make a mockery of the American justice system: There is after all no legal reason to acquit Stone.
One particularly notable feature of the jury is its contribution to the story’s ambivalent depiction of Indigenous Americans. Although the story elsewhere numbers America’s treatment of Indigenous peoples as among its great evils, this passage casts Indigenous people themselves in a villainous light. “King Philip” was the English name of Metacomet, a 17th-century sachem of the Wampanoag who resisted colonial expansion into tribal lands; Simon Girty was a white man who grew up among the Seneca and helped Britain coordinate with its Indigenous allies during the American Revolution.
