THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
from Tales of a traveler:
stories of a nervous gentleman
By Washington Irving
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great ago and immense size. It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meager miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveler stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunk of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the skul1 a kick to shake the dirt from it.
"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his face was neither black nor copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair that stood out from his head in all directions; and bore an ax on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
"What are you doing in my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
"Your grounds?" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be d—d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbor's. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the names of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter."
"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?"
"The right of prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the soil."
"And pray who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.
"Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches."
"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," eaid sTom, sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."
"The same at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonely place would have shaken any man's nerves: but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him: but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these conditions were may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp the stranger paused.
"What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?" said Tom.
"There is my signature," said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and so on until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burned, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish that "a great man had fallen in Israel."
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom, "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and, if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort toward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was she forbore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said a great black man with an ax on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern along responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bullfrog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.
"Let us get hold of the property," said he consolingly to himself, "and we will endeavor to do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably at tempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however, from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed, it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property by the loss of his wife; for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success; the old black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough, in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people.
To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man.
"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy —"
"I'll drive him to the d——l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight. "When will you want the rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker. — So they shook hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a "friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them, at length, dry as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly traveling Zionward were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take such a precaution it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner:
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land jobber begged him to grant a few months' indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated and refused another day.
"My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish," said the land jobber.
"Charity begins at home," replied Tom, "I must take care of myself in these hard times."
"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety — "The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a farthing!"
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.
"Tom, you're come for!" said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a thunderstorm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught eight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony that they were not so much horrorstruck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his covers all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burned to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying prevalent throughout New England, of "The Devil and Tom Walker."
The Devil & Tom Walker
by Washington Irving
Research Washington Irving and put your findings into outline form, following the format given. If you are working on the computer and have Internet access, you may want to find a small picture of Irving to ‘paste’ to the top of the biographical outline. Be certain to get the dates of the author’s birth, death and the work we will study to put on your timeline.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary words are defined within the text of the story. Holding the mouse cursor over any word that is in red text will result in the definition popping up over the word.
inlet
morass
facility
meager
miserly
conspire
hoards
savin
articulate
gridiron
puddingstone
tantalize
balk
petition
termagant
wayfarer
clamor
clapperclawing
askance
bachelor
celibacy
quagmire (mire)
precarious
sloughs
prostrate
bittern
peninsula
impregnable
squaws
embankments
melancholy
incantations
reposed
memento
swathed
eminent
buccaneering
consecrated
Quakers
Anabaptists
"Old Scratch"
daunted
propitiated
surmised
trifles
obliterate
freebooter
avarice
booty
dolefully
carrion
fortitude
whetted
obstinate
usurer
extort
‘rhino’ (slang)
deluged
"Land Bank"
speculating
‘landjobbers’
‘El Dorado’
propitious
ostentation
parsimony
axletrees
censurer
expediency
folio
crack-brained
superfluous
indulgence
piety
trustees
proverb
Comprehension Questions:
1. The story is set in a(n) ________________ area of Massachusetts.
a. industrialized
b. mountainous
c. swampy
d. desert
2. Kidd is said to have buried his treasure in the area because:
3. Kidd never returned for his money because:
4. Tom Walker and his wife were both ________________.
a. wealthy
b. poor
c. ill
d. miserly
5. What does Mrs. Walker’s treatment of the hens tell about her attitude toward money?
6. Describe the short-cut that Tom Walker took.
7. What item did Tom discover while sitting in the swamp?
8. What was similar about most of the trees that Tom could see?
9. What was the meaning of such a tree that had fallen?
10. Why is it asserted that Tom did not fear the devil?
11. Did Tom immediately accept the devil’s offer? Explain.
12. Read II Samuel 3:38 to find the meaning behind Absalom Crowninshield’s obituary: "a great man had fallen in Israel." Explain the meaning.
13. What action did Mrs. Walker take when she saw that Tom was not going to strike the bargain himself? What eventually became of Mrs. Walker?
14. What was Tom’s reaction to his wife’s disappearance? Was he more concerned that she or the valuables were gone? Justify your answer with quotations from the story.
15. What was the deal that Tom and "Old Scratch" struck? Be specific and tell what each party was contracted to do.
16. Hawthorne tells us that "…everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing…". How did this affect Tom’s business in Boston? What kinds of people frequented his place of business?
17. Tom, after amassing a fortune, built a house which Irving describes as "…a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished, out of parsimony." Irving also details the treatment of Walker’s horses. How do these actions reflect on Walker’s attitude toward money? Has his attitude changed from the beginning of the story?
18. What actions did Tom take in order to attempt to outsmart "Old Scratch" and breach his contract?
19. How was Tom "come for"? Did any good come from his being a "violent churchgoer" and carrying a Bible in his pocket? Explain.
20. Describe the events leading to the ‘end’ of Tom Walker. What good came of all his attempts to outwit the devil?
Discussion Questions:
1. "The Devil & Tom Walker" is in the form of a folk
tale. Folk tales are generally populated with stock or stereotypical characters. Think of the folk or fairy tales that you have heard. There is almost always a beautiful girl and a handsome prince who rescues her from her wicked captor. After you have read the story, think of the characters in terms of the type of character that they are. List the characteristics of Tom, Mrs. Walker and "Old Scratch" below. What kind of stereotypical character might each be? Give an example of each type from literature that you have read.
2. What is the transaction that is central to the story? Between which two characters does the deal eventually take place? How does Washington Irving use humor to shift the reader’s focus from the horror of selling one’s soul to the devil? Give two examples from the story, including quotes and a brief explanation of each.
3. The reader gets to know each character by gathering the bits of ‘personality’ that the author has scattered throughout the story. "Old Scratch" is introduced to the reader when he growls an admonition to Tom Walker. Re-read the section of the story beginning with, "Leave that skull alone." List the descriptive details that Irving uses to acquaint the reader with "Old Scratch."
4. Using the list from question 3, prepare a five paragraph expository essay in which you explain how "Old Scratch" was described. Examine the details given in the story and offer your explanation as to their meanings.
5. "The Devil & Tom Walker" has the feeling of a folk tale, in part, due to the method employed to tell the tale. The narrator switches from telling the story from his own perspective to relying on hearsay. These changes are signaled by such phrases as ‘according to the old stories.’ Fill in the chart below by reading the first paragraphs of the story. List what can be classified as fact (assuming that the narrator is being truthful) and what is offered as mere assertion.
6. Using Bible reference books (concordance, dictionary, etc.), offer a description of Satan. Include the various names which he is given, as well as any physical description that you can find. In "The Devil & Tom Walker", the devil is described most fully on his first encounter with Tom. What are the details of his description (see question 3 for the list)? How is he made to seem like an ordinary person, an ‘Everyman’? What details serve as reminders that he is Satan as we see him portrayed biblically? What part of the description leads us to believe that he has adapted his methods to fit his tasks in the New World?
7. In a bargain with the devil, he will always come out the victor. Read the biblical account of Jesus’ temptation in Luke 4:1-13. How does the outcome of Tom’s bargain differ from Christ’s temptation? What method did Christ use to resist Satan’s temptations? How did Tom’s final statement of "The devil take me if I have made a farthing" compare to Christ’s answer to Satan of "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God"?
8. The terms of Tom’s bargain with "Old Scratch" are of interest to the reader. We know that in a deal with the devil, the sinner receives something that he thinks he wants desperately, and the devil receives his soul in return. Tom is portrayed as a greedy man who is obsessed with material goods. He asks for, and is granted, great wealth. What information concerning the way he keeps his mansion and his horses tells the reader that, although he has been granted wealth, he has no peace in financial matters?
9. Is it possible to name an antagonist and a protagonist in this story? Explain your answer.
10. What is the major conflict in this story? How is it resolved?
11. The climax of the story is that point in the action where there is no turning back. After the climax, there must be a logical progression of events to the conclusion. Where would you say the climax of this story is? Why?
Sequencing:
Put the following events from the story in the order that they occurred.
___ Mrs. Walker disappears into the swamp with the
valuables from the Walker home.
___ Tom’s assets turned to cinders.
___ The black man spoke with Tom and introduced himself
by his many names.
___ Tom is taken away on a black horse, just as he is
about to foreclose on a mortgage.
___ Tom cut through the swamp on his way home.
___ Tom strikes a deal with Old Scratch.
___ Tom told his wife of his meeting with Old Scratch
and she encourages him to make the deal.
___ Tom moves to Boston and opens his business.
___ Tom found a skull with a tomahawk in it.
Short Story Activity Sheet for _____________________________________________
Character:
Main character ___________________________________________________
Protagonist _____________________________________________________
Antagonist ______________________________________________________
Did the author include:
___ dialogue? example: ____________________________________
___ dialect? example: ___________________________________
Setting:
Time _____________________ Place ______________________________
Figurative language-Did the author include:
___ personification? Example: ___________________________
___ metaphors? Example: ___________________________
___ similes? Example: ___________________________
Sensory images-Did the author include descriptions of:
___ sight? Example: ___________________________
___ hearing? Example: ___________________________
___ touch? Example: ___________________________
___ taste? Example: ___________________________
___ smell? Example: ___________________________
Plot:
What is the specific conflict in this story?
__________________________________________________________________
Choose the appropriate conflict for this story from one of the generalizations below:
___ man vs man ___ man vs nature
___ man vs group ___ man vs himself
___ man vs society
What is the climax or turning point of the conflict?
__________________________________________________________________
How is the conflict resolved?
__________________________________________________________________
Is the story told chronologically?
__________________________________________________________________
Does the author make use of flashbacks? If yes, give examples.
__________________________________________________________________
Point of View:
From whose viewpoint is the story written?
___ 1st person
___ 3rd person, observer
___ 3rd person, omniscient
Is the point of view consistent throughout the story? If no, give
examples.
__________________________________________________________________
Theme:
What is the main idea of the short story?
__________________________________________________________________
Can it be expressed as a proverb or maxim? If so, state it.
__________________________________________________________________
Conclusion:
What is the predominant element of the story?
___ character
___ setting
___ plot
___ point of view
___ theme
Does the story contain:
___ symbolism example: ______________________
___ incongruity example: ______________________
___ suspense example: ______________________
___ surprise ending example: ______________________
___ irony example: ______________________
___ satire example: ______________________