The Devil and Tom Walker

The Devil and Tom Walker

1. Plot(analysis)

   • A few miles from Boston, Massachusetts, is a deep inlet that winds for miles inland and terminates in a swamp. This inlet is flanked by a beautiful grove on one side and a ridge on the other from which huge oaks grow, under one of which, as the old stories have it, Captain Kidd the pirate buried a great amount of treasure. It is also said that the devil (later referred to as Old Scratch) himself oversaw the hiding of the money and guards it even now, for the devil guards all buried treasure, especially treasure acquired immorally. But Kidd never recovered his wealth; shortly after burying it, he was seized at Boston, sent to England, and hanged there for piracy.
     • The narrator uses the description of the inlet and swamp to suggest the themes and establish the tone for the story: the seductions and dangers of the physical world, moral slipperiness and obscurity. The devil guards the treasure not to protect it, but so as to use it in tempting others to lives of sin. Captain Kidd is representative of all the story’s greedy characters, whose efforts to slake their greed result not in earthly pleasure but self-destruction.
       • The narrative proper opens in the year 1727, when earthquakes are prevalent in New England, humbling many proud sinners to their knees. Near the inlet where Kidd buried his treasure there lives, in a forlorn house with an air of starvation about it and a starving horse in the field nearby, a poor miser named Tom Walker, who is married to a an ill-tempered, fierce, loud, strong wife as miserly as himself. So miserly are the two, in fact, that they even try to cheat each other, the wife hiding valuables like eggs, the husband prying to detect her secret hoard. The two fight often, and locals suspect that Tom’s wife even physically abuses her husband, though no one ventures to interfere between the two.
         • The earthquakes suggest how shaky a life of worldliness really is, and we might regard the story itself as a metaphorical earthquake that brings proud Tom to his knees. The futility of greed is witnessed by the air of starvation that hangs about Tom and his wife’s estate, as well as by how greed motivates the two to quarrel with and deceive one another. Their miserliness causes misery in both this life and the next.
           • One day Tom Walker is taking an ill-conceived shortcut home through the nearby swamp; it is gloomy with pines and hemlocks and owls, full of pits and boggy areas which travelers sometimes plunge into, deceived into thinking them solid ground by the weeds and mosses which partly cover them. Tom navigates the treacherous swamp carefully, scared occasionally by the screaming and quacking of birds.
             • Tom’s shortcut through the swamp symbolizes the shortcuts people take to prosper in this world, like the investors introduced later with their get-rich-quick schemes. However, such shortcuts are riddled with pitfalls, to both economic depression and hell.
               • At length, late in the dusk of the evening, Tom arrives at a piece of firm ground in which slump the overgrown ruins of an old fort used by Indians in their war with the American colonists, a former haven for Indian women and children, the Indians’ last foothold. Here Tom decides to rest as no one else would, so troubled would they be by what they would have heard in stories from the Indian wars, about how “the savages” cast spells here and “made sacrifices to the evil spirit” (later called Old Scratch). Tom, however, is not afraid of such things.
                 • Warfare is an even more extreme expression of human greed than usury (money-lending), and it also results, ultimately, in nothing but ruins, as the fort bears witness to. That the Indians worship Old Scratch is perhaps shocking (though also consistent with the racist perception of Native Americans at the time the story was written). At the same time, it’s worth noting that the story portrays American colonists like Deacon Peabody and Tom himself as also worshipping the devil by acting on their greed. When looked at in that way, the colonists are no more moral than the Indians, they are just better at deceiving themselves about their immorality.
                   • Warfare is an even more extreme expression of human greed than usury (money-lending), and it also results, ultimately, in nothing but ruins, as the fort bears witness to. That the Indians worship Old Scratch is perhaps shocking (though also consistent with the racist perception of Native Americans at the time the story was written). At the same time, it’s worth noting that the story portrays American colonists like Deacon Peabody and Tom himself as also worshipping the devil by acting on their greed. When looked at in that way, the colonists are no more moral than the Indians, they are just better at deceiving themselves about their immorality.
                     • Summary
                       • Despite this negative reception, the story about an unpleasant man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for wealth is one of the works for which Irving is best remembered. Commonly referred to as a "comic New England Faust," the story bears many similarities to the German folktale of Faust, a man who trades his soul to the devil for a number of things, including love and money. Irving had travelled widely in Germany by the time he wrote ''The Devil and Tom Walker,'' and it can be assumed that he was familiar with German Romantic writer Johann Goethe's version of the tale which was published in Goethe's novel Faust. More so than European versions of the tale, Irving instills the tale with the moral ideals common to New England in the early nineteenth century. In an area settled by Quakers and Puritans, religious piety was of utmost importance to citizens, and the lesson of Tom Walker's ruin illustrated the sorrow that would befall unscrupulous sinners.
                         • Tom Walker is a miser who worships money more than he does his miserly wife. Tom Walker was a greedy and selfish man. This is until he takes a walk in the swamp at an old Indian fortress and starts up a conversation with the Devil incarnate (referred to as "Old Scratch" in the story.) Old Scratch strikes up a deal with Tom Walker: he offers the riches hidden in the swamp by Captain Kidd in exchange for Tom's employment under Old Scratch. Tom agrees to think about it, and returns home. Burdened with this secret, he mentions it to his greedy wife. When he is not there, Tom's wife takes all the valuables in the house and goes to make a deal with Old Scratch. When Tom goes in search of his wife, all he can find of her is her heart and liver in her apron tied to a tree. This conveyed two beliefs common among Irving's contemporaries: that the Devil finds you, rather than the other way around, and that women were held in contempt by the Devil. Tom Walker then agrees to the deal with Old Scrat
                           • (his wife was abusive towards him and he considered her death at the hand of Old Scratch a good thing). Tom agrees to become a loan shark. Tom constantly swindles people out of money, until he suddenly becomes fearful for the after-life. He then starts to become fiercely dedicated to God, always keeping a Bible at hand. When, one day, a person who had borrowed money from him and is asking for clemency blames Tom for taking his money, Tom says, "The Devil take me if I have made but a farthing!" At this time, there are three loud knocks at the door. Tom is drawn towards the black cloaked figure and realizes, in horror, that he has left his Bible at his desk. Tom Walker is then taken away by the Devil on the back of a black horse and is never seen again. All his assets vanished and his house burned to the ground. The ghost of the miser haunts the site of the old fort
                             • Theme
                               • he Devil and Tom Walker" is satirical because Washington Irving is making fun of Tom and his wife for being so greedy for money. They are both so willing to get the fortune that the devil is talking about that they are both willing to sell themselves to the devil. Washington Irving is making fun of the greediness in some people. The implied criticisms in the story are kind of the same thing. Irving is trying to get his readers to understand that being greedy can get you into trouble and is criticizing people who are greedy. Irving portrays the dark side of religion by showing the devil as an evil character. Religion involves both God and the devil. The devil is a part of religion, and he is not the part of religion that most people like to think about. He is the antagonist in the story and is the one who the reader is supposed to dislike. In the story, Tom's wealth ends up being Tom's downfall. When Tom says to let the devil take him if he's made any money, Irving is showing that the
                                 • that the devil had a right to take Tom since Tom sold himself to the devil. The devil took Tom to the underworld because Tom had made money off of others. Therefore his wealth was his downfall.