THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER
by Stephen Vincent Benét, 1937

Primarily a poet, Stephen Vincent Benét won the Pulitzer Prize with his narrative poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body. His interest in American themes is also represented in the short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster," which received unanimously the first prize in an O. Henry Memorial award competition. As one of the judges remarked, "This has as fine a chance to approach immortality as any short story can attain. It is typically American, and typically New England. It is also a folk legend."

The story is a legend, combining a traditional myth with a specifically American tale. The myth is that of Faust, the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for a period of worldly fulfillment. Early versions of the myth concerned a scholar who was willing to sell his soul in exchange for knowledge. Probably the most famous versions are those of Christopher Marlowe, who created a Renaissance tragedy about the aspiring hero who ultimately is damned, according to the demonic pact, and of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose eighteenth-century epic poem introduces a significant change, in that the doomed hero, Faust, actually achieves salvation at the end. Many variants have been composed, among them the Benét story, which adds an interesting patriotic twist.

The Faust figure in this story is Jabez Stone, a farmer in New Hampshire who is down on his luck. His wife and children are ailing, his field is not producing crops, and his horses suddenly become ill. He is so depressed with his lot that, although he is a religious man, he vows he would sell his soul to the devil to improve his wretched fortunes. Naturally the devil shows up the very next day in the guise of a well-dressed and soft-spoken lawyer. The pact is made. Jabez experiences seven years of prosperity, after which he persuades the devil to grant him an extension of three more years. At the end of the decade Jabez, in desperation, asks Daniel Webster, a fellow New Hampshire man, to take on his legal case and defend him.

The story is told in the third person from the viewpoint of an omniscient observer. It begins with the casual remark, "It's a story they tell in the border country, where Massachusetts joins Vermont and New Hampshire," and concludes with another reference to the three states. The voice is that of a rural speaker, in colloquial language, somewhat resembling that of farmer Stone. The reader has a sense of immediacy throughout.

The major characters are the unhappy farmer, Jabez; his lawyer, Daniel Webster; and the devil, who prefers to be called Scratch. Jabez Stone, whose very name sounds like the hardy, struggling New England farmer, is a decent though desperate man. When he realizes that his request may endanger the soul of the great orator, Daniel Webster, he pleads with his would-be savior to leave before the devil gets him. Webster, however, in many ways a man of similar nature—an educated and rhetorical version of the down-to-earth farmer—asserts that he has never left either a case or a jug unfinished. He stays on the case, remaining calm even when the devil shows the little black box with air holes in the lid in which he carries the souls of people he has bought.

Webster begins the case by insisting on an all-American jury. "Let it be the quick or the dead!" The members of the jury selected by the devil are a gallery of traitors and criminals, all actual figures from American history, including such notables as the pirate Teach and the cruel governor Dale, who broke men on the wheel. The judge, fittingly, is Hawthorne, who presided at the witch trials in Salem and never repented of the convictions.

Webster's appeal to the jury is brilliantly handled by Benét. At first the doughty lawyer simply "got madder and madder," determined to "bust out with lightenings and denunciations." But as he stares at the wild glitter in the eyes of these damned souls, he realizes that would be a mistake. Instead, he decides to address them as men, the men that they were rather than the damned that they have become.

At this point Benét wisely decides to resume indirect narration. He does not attempt to repeat Webster's speech word for word but rather tells us what he talked about. He does not condemn or revile but instead talks about what makes a man a man. He speaks of the simple things, of the meaning of America and the part that even traitors have played in its development. He speaks so movingly that the diabolic glitter disappears from the eyes of the jurors, who seem to return to being simply men once more. Walter Butler, the loyalist terrorist of the Revolution, delivers the verdict, astonishing the devil by finding for the defendant.

The author later returns to the word-for-word exchange of devil and lawyer. Benét then introduces a new angle, one that has nothing to do with the Faust myth but much to do with his characters. The devil offers to tell Webster's fortune. The device is effective, for it brings the theme of American history full circle. Webster learns what we know, that he would never become president but that his beloved union would survive. At that final prediction Webster characteristically bursts into comic, good-natured invective. "Why, then, you long-barreled, slab-sided, lantern-jawed, fortune-telling note shaver, … I'd go to the Pit itself to save the Union!" The story ends with homespun humor and with a new legend in the making. The devil, being worsted by Dan'l, has never dared to return to New Hampshire.

With its blend of down-to-earth realism and mythic imagination, the story captures the reader on many levels. It was also made into a successful one-act folk opera, with music by Douglas Moore, as well as a Hollywood film titled All That Money Can Buy.

—Charlotte Spivack