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Greed In Washington Irving's The Devil And Tom Walker

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The Devil and Tom Walker The Devil and Tom Walker is a short story that was written by Washington Irving depicting Tom Walkers greed. Near a swamp in the 1700’s, lived a grumpy man named Tom Walker and his wife, who was also a grumpy hag. They were both greedy, so greedy that they would even try to trick and cheat each other. All they did was argue and bicker about money and wealth. Some of the disputes often even became physical, evident by some of the occasional marks of Tom’s face (Page 314, Line 33). One day while he was out in the swamp, Walker stumbled across some indian remains with a tomahawk imbedded into them. He kicks the skull, and is startled when a Negro man speaks to him. The man was wearing a red sash around his body, with ash and soot staining his face, as if he is …show more content…

And when Tom tells his wife about the strange encounter, she greedily pleads and encourages him to accept the devils’ offer (Page 319, Line 151), but only to spite her he refuses (Page 319, Line 153-156). “He was not damned to please her.” (Page 319, Line 155). When she finds that she is unable to change his mind, she sets out to find the devil herself, planning to offer her own soul for the same prize, a rumored buried treasure. She takes all of her household possessions that were worth anything of value, and sets out to find old scratch. When she does not return for several days, Tom begins to worry for his possessions, so he sets back out to find his wife. When he returns to the place where he first met old scratch, he finds an apron hanging in a tree. Thinking that he’s found his things he opens the apron and finds a heart and a liver. It is evident that his wife has died while in the midst of trying to negotiate with the devil. Tom is grateful and relieved about his wives death, because now he didn’t have to share his fortune with her (Page 320, Line

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In both “The Devil and Daniel Webster and “The Devil and Tom Walker, they both came face to face with the devil. They had different strategies on how to confront the devil. In the two short stories, the resolution, the depictions of the devil, and the role of religion or the saving grace are the similar and different things. The main idea of both stories is the resolution of what had happened to Daniel and Tom.

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Characters in stories sometimes follow a theme when it comes to their traits. These traits are called archetypes. Archetypes can be as simple as a villain or hero. They can also be used to portray unfathomable human characteristics that exists in everyone. Characteristics such as greed, lust, envy, pride, sloth, and gluttony are examples.

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Washington Irving wrote many wonderful romanticism stories. One of these stories, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, involves a man, making a deal with the Devil. It begins when the elderly man, Tom Walker, walks through a marsh one day instead of his usual route home through the town. He walked in the marsh until water seeped into his shoe, and he sat down to drain the water, and saw a black man, who he later found out was the Devil, sitting on a stump, looking at him. They talked for a while, until Tom asked the Devil, “‘The upshot of all which is, that, if I'm not mistake not,’ said Tom, sturdily, ‘you are he commonly called Old Scratch’.

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As Tom kicks at the skull, he hears a voice and looks up to see a black man. This black man was wearing a red sash around his body and had a soot-stained face, which gave the impression that he worked in a fiery place. It doesn't take long before the stranger is identified as the devil, also known as Old Scratch. His nickname comes from his tendency of cutting down trees The devil confirms a story of buried treasure and offers it to Tom but only on a certain condition, It is assumed that the devil wants his soul (but it is not clearly known at this point). The devil makes a point of proving who he says he is by putting his finger print into Tom’s

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In the "Devil and Tom Walker", written by Washington Irving, and " The Devil and Daniel Webster", written by Steven Vincent Benet, the endings or resolutions of the stories are comparable. In " The Devil and Tom Walker", Tom sold his soul to the devil. He then was kind of nervous about it, bu to spite his wife he did it anyway. When he didn't complete what the devil asked of him, his wife went into the forest and sold her soul.

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In the short story titled The Devil And Tom Walker,Washington Irving explains that no matter how hard life is going to never sell our soul. For instance, Tom wanted to save his wife but in ordinary to save her Tom had to sell his soul. Irving’s asserts that walker had to sell his store to save his wife from dying. The author’s purpose is to convince that the audience should should never sell their soul no matter the situation. The author writes in an serious tone for the audience to realize that selling out isn’t the right thing to do.

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In the fictional story written by Washington Irving, "The Devil and Tom Walker," the author illustrates the persuasion used by the devil himself, his attempts to push Walker into becoming a slave trader to fulfill his desire of wealth, this gives us an idea of what the people of the 1720s and the 1730s were like, desperate for an easy escape using money. Irving writes “Tom resolutely refused: he was bad enough in all conscience, but the Devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-trader.” This embodies that although Tom had some evil in him to achieve what he wanted, he wouldn’t turn to such extremes, and it seems as if people during that time wanted an escape from the poverty they were suffering from the separation of the mother country.

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