Similarities Between The Devil And Tom Walker And The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving wrote two stories that have become profoundly popular over the decades. Some of the stories many stories he wrote were The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and The Devil and Tom Walker. Even though the stories were both good, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow was written better in my opinion. I’m going to prove that the Legend of Sleepy Hollow was better by comparing and contrasting common themes they shared. The themes I chose to compare and contrast are wealth, the supernatural, and karma. All three of these themes played a big part in these two stories, so comparing and contrasting the two won’t be all that hard. The first theme I will discuss is wealth because in my opinion it was the most used out of all the themes present.

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In the story, The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom and the Devil made a deal, and actually engaged with each other. Nothing about it made me surprised, but in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow there was more of the surprising factor that drew the reader in. I say this because in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, you couldn’t tell when the headless horseman was going to come. He made it build up to seeing him. On the contrary, in the other story, the devil showed up all the time. Also, In the Devil and Tom Walker, Irving didn’t make the devil very scary, he made him seem like a friend to Tom, so it wasn’t even that scary. This was demonstrated when the devil said to Tom, “You are the usurer for my money! When will you want the rhino?” (Irving 5) Unlike the Devil and Tom Walker, The legend of Sleepy Hollow drew me into the story because there was more suspicion. On the contrary, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow also had that horror factor to it. They made the figure, the Headless Horseman actually scary. The supernatural became a theme in both stories, but the theme, karma, was demonstrated as

In the Devil and Tom Walker, Tom had karma coming for him, but so did everyone else in the story besides the devil himself. It was more profound in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow because the only one who had karma was Ichabod. In addition, Irving made it obvious that Tom was gonna end up dying in the end. He didn’t make it interesting like he did in the other story. I knew right away when Tom said, "The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a farthing!" (Irving 7) I might as well have stopped reading right there because I knew what was gonna happen next. The devil was going to come for him. With the devil coming for Tom, it was obvious on where he disappeared to as well (hell). In the other story, Irving made the story more interesting on how he left town, because no one knows where he left off to. Even the reader didn’t know unlike in the Devil and Tom Walker. So overall, I think that karma was shown profoundly better in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow