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Examples Of Allegory In The Devil And Tom Walker

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“The Devil and Tom Walker” Allegory Throughout the history of literature there have been many prominent and robust allegories published. “The Devil and Tom Walker” is a short story written by Washington Irving.
An allegory can be represented as a story, poem, or essay that can be picked apart to reveal a hidden meaning, usually a moral or political one. Many renowned allegories written throughout time contain an essential ingredient, symbolism. Symbolism uses images and indirect suggestions to express mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind. In an allegory like “The Devil and Tom Walker” the fantastic elements are “real” in the sense that they represent something else (Piedmont-Marton 55). The story of “The Devil and Tom Walker” is …show more content…

The intelligence and precision of Irving’s writing helps convey a greater and more meaningful moral message to the audience. Ultimately, the symbols and characters comply with the imagery and imagination used to reveal the theme of self greed. Irving uses Old Scratch, Tom Walker, and the swamp to help exemplify the symbols of greed, moral corruption, and temptation in the story of “The Devil and Tom Walker”. Greed is portrayed in many different interesting ways in works of literature written throughout the ages. In “The Devil and Tom Walker”, greed is represented in a multitude of characters and items. From Tom Walker’s wife to the swamp, greed is represented immensely throughout the story. The most notable representation of greed is Tom Walker himself. Tom Walker is a stingy man who wants the world for himself. Tom, a poor business man, will do anything for wealth. He does not want to share anything with anyone, even his own wife, let alone witness her take pleasure in anything that Tom does not get to enjoy first. One day as Tom is walking through the woods, he meets a dark man who is chopping down trees. The man, named Old Scratch, informs Tom that he is the devil and offers him a wish of …show more content…

Many of the everyday and small temptations we face entail minimum consequences. In the case of Tom Walker, he meets the devil known as “Old Scratch”. In Many stories that contain the devil, the devil represents temptation; the story of Tom Walker is no different. Tom's interactions with Old Scratch illustrate just how disastrous greed and temptation can be. The devil identifies Tom’s weakness of greed and tempts him with the thing Walker craves most in life, wealth. It is the Devil’s usual place in literature to tempt other characters, often by providing some hapless character a deal “too good to refuse”(Wilson 50). Old Scratch uses Kidd the pirate’s treasure as bait to reel Tom in, and once he got him hooked, there was no return for Tom. Old Scratch exploits Tom’s weakness to the point of complete devotion of Tom’s soul to him. Temptation is usually fueled by an accomplice, and in The Devil and Tom Walker it is greed and the desire for power. The devil also uses the death of Tom’s wife to anchor Tom into finalizing the deal. Ultimately, temptation is what gets Tom Walker killed at the end of the story. If Tom were to put down his urges for mass amounts of wealth in the “wrong” way, his wife would have lived and he would also not have had his soul taken away from him in the end. With that being said, Old Scratch is the symbolic representation of temptation in the story of “The Devil and Tom

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