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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Devil and Tom Walker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Greed. Usury. Wealth, Religion, and Hypocrisy. Storytelling as Moral Instruction. Summary. Analysis. A few miles from Boston, Massachusetts, is a deep inlet that winds for miles inland and terminates in a ...
Nov 21, 2023 · Satire uses humor and irony to point out faults in society. Irony occurs when an audience knows more about a situation than the reader does. This short story tells of a man named Tom Walker and ...
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- Catherine Riccio-Berry
- A main theme of The Devil and Tom Walker is that greed can lead people to do horrible things. Before selling his soul to the devil, the main charac...
- There are numerous allusions in The Devil and Tom Walker. Many of these are Biblical allusions which add to the satire Irving provides of religious...
- The devil symbolizes evil in The Devil and Tom Walker. The main character and his wife are both willing to sell their souls to the devil and do his...
- Irony is used in The Devil and Tom Walker to point to numerous societal ills. Among these include hypocrisy, usury, and historians who believe they...
Explanation and Analysis—Religious Hypocrisy : One major target of Irving’s satire in the story is the religious hypocrisy of Tom Walker, and by implication the early Puritans of New England more broadly. He thought with regret of the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
The Devil and Tom Walker. Irving uses satire to not only show that characters are morally backwards but also to add humor to the story. For example, Tom’s loveless, hostile marriage to his wife both satirizes the institution of marriage and provides humor in the despicable nature of both characters. In this way, the story becomes ...
Like most of Irving's stories, "The Devil and Tom Walker" is a satire; so because the author is mocking Puritan beliefs and superstitions, hypocritical church members, greedy husbands and wives ...
Rather, the fictional landscape of the "The Devil and Tom Walker" seems haunted by events of the past and infused by Irving's occasionally biting satire. ''The Devil and Tom Walker'' is written in ...
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Oct 21, 2015 · Answers 1. "The Devil and Tom Walker" is first and foremost a satirical account of the perils of greed, and in this section, Tom pays the price for his greed that never ended. This satire is very relevant to the time period in which Irving wrote this story, as the early 1800s were a time of constant land expansion and industrial growth.
