Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was already hardly the towering figure of fame he had been during his life when Benet published the story, but his treatment of Webster seems to assume a foreknowledge that future readers would need even more background information on him in order for the story to really make sense. Whether that was the impulse or not, the description of Daniel Webster for the purpose of implicating him as a larger-than-life figure from American history is a masterful display of imagery on Benet’s part. Within a matter of paragraphs, the reader is able to construct an image of Webster as: a failed Presidential nominee who nevertheless was still the biggest man in the country, who was possessed of such oratorical skill that he could make a river cower into disappearance just by speaking in opposition to it. The imagery continues with a masterpiece of physical description: “mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain and eyes like burning anthracite.”
The Devil as Agency of the Unnatural
Throughout the story, imagery conveys that the overriding characteristic associated with the devil that can make him identifiable to humans is the sense that he represents the unnatural order of things. The first indication of this is that Jabez doesn’t like his smile because there were too many teeth and they were all a little too white. Later, Webster will refer to his otherness more directly when he implicates him as a “foreign prince.” The devil himself admits proudly that Northerners consider him a Southerner and Southerners consider him a Northerner, further cementing his presence as contrary to the natural order regardless of the order. Capable of conjuring fire, the devil’s flame burns blue rather than red.
Jabez Stone’s Reversal of Fortune
Perhaps the most efficient use of imagery in the story is the way Benet uses it to portray Jabez Stone as first a victim of perpetual bad luck and then the reversal of his fortune following his deal with the devil. What is most extraordinary is that Benet expends a mere three paragraphs to fully flesh out what is—aside from the trial—really the single most important plot point in the entire story. Among the imagery which conveys his bad luck: his potatoes get blight, the rocks on his land are bigger than those of his neighbors, the larger his family grows the less food there to feed them and not only has his plowhorse developed a cough, but his kids have measles. The imagery that reveals his luck has changed is equally effective: fat cows, sleek horses, lightning avoids his barn and then there was talk of a run for the state senate.
The Jury
Daniel Webster is given the opportunity to set conditions for who can be on the jury and it seems he has been a bit shortsighted by limiting himself to just one: any American, dead or alive. Naturally, the devil being the trickster he is goes with the latter and not just any dead Americans, but some of the most infamous Americans in its short history. The scene which introduces the members of the jury is fraught with sinister imagery including the devil conjuring that unnatural blue flame to accompany their entry through the door. Their names and a quick elucidation of their infamy is supplemented with imagery that serves to further accentuate the shortsightedness of Webster in allowing the devil even a window of opportunity to pick the jury in a trial. These are green-eyed men with blood stains on their shirts who have “spread fire and horror” and sport a “great gash” on their head and have “strangler’s hands” the red imprint of a rope of the gallows burned into their necks, men who walk into the room with “the fires of hell upon them.”
