The Devil and Tom Walker essays

The Devil and Tom Walker essays Washington Irving wrote the Devil and Tom Walker in 1824. Irving created fictitious, stereotypical, one-dimensional characters, and put them in unrealistic situations. During this same time period the slave trade was still highly profitable in the United States. This story can be read on two levels. The first could be as a folk tale. It tells an interesting story of a man who chooses to sell his soul to the devil for riches and what happens. In the end, like in all folk tales, there is the final moral that greed will destroy people and their souls. On a deeper level, Irving shows his own personal distaste for the slave trade. In certain passages throughout the short story he blatantly speaks of it. Like when the devil attempts to strike a deal with Tom Walker. The bargain is all the treasure for Toms work as a slave trader. Tom believes that the slave trade is morally wrong and will not agree. At the same time the devil proposes Tom become a usurer. As a loan shark, Tom has no conscience objection and eagerly agrees. This is one of the ways Irving shows the large gray area created by the slave trade between right and wrong. People saw involving oneself in slave trafficking as ethically wrong, but taking money from the poor white public as a simple business transaction. However, both were equally corrupt and morally wrong. Irving saw that even the rich, successful broker who foreclosed mortgages and extorted bonds could easily be in the same league as a vicious, cut throat slave trader and wanted to make the similarities painfully clear. Even the way Irving ends the story, with all of Tom Walkers fortune ending up worth nothing, he shows that even with a highly prestigious career a person can still be as corrupt and vile as the devil. Irving was a purveyor of social change and disguised his opinion as a fable. Which helped to make his feelings covertly known to the masses and enacted to change cultural mores. ...