Greed In Washington Irving's The Devil And Tom Walker

In Washington Irving’s tale The Devil and Tom Walker, the protagonist, Tom Walker, makes a diabolical pact to act as a broker with his newfound riches. He causes the town’s economics to be in doldrums, and ends up paying his debts on a tragic note. The excerpt aptly reflects the frenzied mindset embodied by the town in the wake of Governor Belcher and their “paper credit” from the previously established Land Bank, projecting an omnipresent desperation that would ensure the success of Tom’s stint. With such monetary terms feeding the protagonist’s ascendancy, the balance behind mercenary and magnanimous virtues becomes apropos to the tale.

At the start of the passage, Tom is introduced with a “reputation (as) a ready moneyed man, who would

lend money out for a good consideration”, but would also “squeeze his customers closer and closer… dry as a sponge from his door”. With this apparent duality, the pragmatic approaches concretised through the character show a sense of innate selfishness masked by the façade of generosity, illustrating that the two aspects are but different sides of the same coin. The parallel in roles between the individual and the broker describes an ability to be truly selfless to others, but with an acknowledgement that it can only be achieved by accumulating an abundance of assets for the self. The two sides congruently follow the concept of greed to show the entrenched nature of Tom’s role. In the latter part of the tale, Tom’s conversion to Christianity further expands on this thematic notion by illustrating the insincerity of his self-reproach against the backdrop of his sincere admonition towards others as part of his redemption.

Hypocrisy comes into the picture when the juxtaposition of Tom’s business terms with his own ambitions renders the craft’s effectiveness. His accessibility as “the universal friend of the needy… always (exacting) good pay and good security” allows him to exert unsympathetic arrangements where “in proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms”. His double standards mimic the realistic nature of the market, where the self is secondary to the society when subjected to its currency. While Tom is guilty of being hypocritical, the town people, “the needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit”, are also subjected to the hypocrisy of their debts. This false virtue becomes clear when the passage critiques the way everyday people model themselves into idealists with the propensity to “(dream) of making sudden fortunes from nothing”. The act of “(raising) money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices” by the people show unfeasible methods executed to borrow practical credit. At the end of the day, the funds go into lucrative outlets to eventually ensnare them in the same debt cycle.

Irving’s transparency regarding Tom’s flaws and the town’s vile reactions acts as a pictorial trope emphasing on his epoch infected with “the great speculating fever”. The setting in which “the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of “hard times”” becomes an allegory of ethics that resound in the tale. The ostensible greed present in society concentrates on the self, all the while looking for altruistic opportunities. While Irving’s tale portrays itself as folklore, the passage aptly captures the lessons with its detached narrative and forms a penetrable proverb ultimately dealing with moral degeneration.