Irving creates the mood of his story by giving the readers a sense of fear through the use diction. “It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Anyone but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil spirit” (Irving 155). Irving uses specific words in his text as a form of negative diction to create an eerie mood. Irving uses the words such as “unwilling”, “lonely”, “melancholy”, “savages”, and “sacrifices” to create his desired eerie
Irving creates the mood of his story by giving the readers a sense of fear through the use diction. “It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Anyone but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil spirit” (Irving 155). Irving uses specific words in his text as a form of negative diction to create an eerie mood. Irving uses the words such as “unwilling”, “lonely”, “melancholy”, “savages”, and “sacrifices” to create his desired eerie