Corruption In The Devil And Tom Walker

Insignificant and meager traits could easily lead to despair and the demolition of inner goodness. In “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Washington Irving introduces the importance of possessing morality by exposing the omnipresence of moral corruption and signifying that excessive greed holds the power to eradicate the humanity of mankind. The omnipresence of corruption throughout “The Devil and Tom Walker” plays a major role throughout the story. Set in colonial New England, this story brings about the past of the young country and its colonial past; the dark history of the murky swamp where Tom Walker struck a deal with the devil “hardly portrays a people proudly connected to their own noble heritage…this is a community content to bury and forget

Tom Walker’s conversion to religion, “made specifically for the sake of his own personal interest rather than his faith in God, is a further act of moral corruption” (The Devil and Tom Walker 51) and reveals his true purpose of exonerating himself from the terrible deeds that he had executed. This pattern can be seen in modern society; if one had made a crucial mistake, that person would first think something along the lines of “What should I do?” and would inexorably be overcome with anxiety and unease. Such relentless trepidation would lead to clouded visions and unavoidable poor judgment skills. As stated earlier, this illustration portrays the well-repeated statement that moral corruption is inevitable and irrevocable when intentions are not true in

As the main theme and motif of the story, greed repeatedly appears throughout the story to illustrate the importance of righteous judgment. Irving uses the financial plot to describe “the state of affairs in colonial Boston, neatly delineating the avarice and religious hypocrisy of the inhabitants” (Zug 57). The inhabitants were plagued with false hope of “making sudden fortunes from nothing” but were left “in doleful plight” (Irving 178); the false hope had essentially stemmed from their intuitive acquisitiveness. This also provided the setting to construct the attributes of Tom Walker; he, like the other inhabitants of colonial Boston, strived to miraculously discover hidden wealth. However, his rapacity was greater than the others, and he went to the extent of striking a deal with the devil, “blinded by his own greed” (The Devil and Tom Walker 51). As a matter of fact, the character of Tom Walker was precisely built upon the concept of greediness. The parsimonious routine of Tom Walker is one consequence that was brought on by superfluous stinginess. Although the generality of Tom Walker’s capital comprised of corrupted money, the way that he neglected to furnish his ostentatiously vast house and to care for his carriage depicts the fact that he did things “in the fullness of his vain glory” (Irving 180). It also contributes to the aspect