Similarities Between The Devil And Tom Walker

The Devil and Tom Walker Written by Washington Irving, Tom goes through life hard, but cheats his way to the top. As you read you notice the choices he makes and why he does them. When Tom continues to make bad decisions he starts to regret them. In this short story Tom illustrates three major thematic threads throughout the story, He exemplifies Greed, Temptation, and Hypocrisy. The first theme Tom illustrates is Greed. Tom shows great greed throughout the short story mainly with money. He thinks he has to have more money and more things to be happy which, is not the case. When he gets the riches and goes home and still continued to cheat people out of their money. Also he spends money on nothing but himself, and not even feeding his hungry horses. Accepts a deal for more wealth and

An excellent symbol for temptation is Old Scratch, which is the devil. Old Scratch tempts Tom with wealth and riches beyond his imagination, which is what Tom really wants. There is a catch to having all this wealth and riches, He has to sign over his soul to the devil. Immediately accepting the deal as tom says he will do anything to get the wealth and riches. His wife also tells him to take the deal but tom wasn’t sure about it and his wife tries and dies in the process which leads to Tom accepting the deal. When he gets his part of the deal he starts to regret it which leads to the next theme Hypocrisy. The final theme Tom Goes through is Hypocrisy. One thing he does is signing his soul away to the devil which is a sin. As he thinks about what he has done he starts to regret his decision. He started to go to church all of a sudden and praying hoping it would help repent from the deal he made with the devil. He also started carrying a small bible in pocket and a big bible on his desk, which he would read. With doing all of these things dealing with church he doesn’t really mean it he is just trying to trick the devil into not taking his