when he loans money. Including Tom's turn to religion in the story is Irving's way of critiquing people who are very loud about their religious beliefs but do not actually act in ways that are in keeping with their purported religion.

Ultimately, Tom's day of reckoning does come. When he is accused of making people pay exorbitant interest rates for his own financial gain, Tom says, "The devil take me if I have made a farthing!" At this claim, the Devil appears and does take Tom. After Tom's sudden disappearance, which it can be assumed is his death, people begin to look through his possessions.

On searching his coffers 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 burnt to the ground.

The complete decimation of all of Tom's signs of wealth is Irving's way of critiquing people's obsessions with possessions and spending so much time acquiring material goods when they mean nothing once people die.

In The Devil And Tom Walker, the author's purpose in writing is to warn against avarice and selfishness; he appeals to anyone who thinks that he/she can gamble the happiness of his/her life for shady gain. His message is that it does not pay to covet wealth at any cost.

In the story, Tom Walker makes a pact with Old Scratch/the Devil for Kidd the Pirate's treasure. Accordingly, Tom has to fulfill some conditions set by the Devil in exchange for access to such wealth. We are never told what those conditions are, but it is implied that it involves nothing less than complete surrender to the service of the sly Tempter.

When Tom takes his wife into his confidence, she begs him to accept the terms and conditions. Perversely, Tom refuses, for the sake of being contradictory. The couple quarrel long and hard about the affair. Eventually, Tom's wife makes her own deal with the Devil. One day, she absconds with all of the valuables the couple owns. When she is not heard from again, Tom goes looking for her. During his search at the Indian fort, he spies a bundle tied up in a checkered apron, hanging upon the branches of a tree. Tom is ecstatic, but this is not due to the knowledge that this bundle might provide him with clues of his wife's whereabouts. He just thinks that the bundle contains the household valuables his wife had taken with her.

When he climbs up the tree and gets a hold of the bundle, he discovers to his shock that it contains a heart and a liver. Shock gives way to unfettered joy when he realizes that the Devil has probably done him a great favor in dispatching his wife.

The story concludes with Tom fulfilling the terms of his agreement with the Devil and losing his life and his soul in the process. The author asserts that Tom disappears without a trace one day; all he has left to his name is an iron chest filled with wood-chips and shavings plus two skeletons in his stable. Sadly, his house also burns down to the ground not long after he disappears. The moral of the story is that it does not pay to be both parsimonious and covetous.

While Washington Irving's true purpose in writing "The Devil and Tom Walker" might never be known, we can deduce from the times and the themes of the story what it might have been. For example, because of the strong Puritan influence on literature during the 1800s, it is easy to show how greed and wealth act as opposites to godliness and charity; Tom Walker is a greedy man and even in his "repentance," which is only lip-service, he acts greedy, leading directly to his personal destruction.

Another purpose is to modernize the legend of Faust; both stories concern a wealthy man who makes a deal with the devil, is successful for a time, and is then undone; while some versions of Faust end with redemption, "The Devil..." always ends with Tom Walker's destruction. Irving may have intended to show that this life is fleeting, and sins will always be punished, even if it takes time.

In place of gold and silver his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings... such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to heart.
(Irving, "The Devil and Tom Walker," loa.org)

Here, we see that Tom Walker's desires made no difference in the end. His money may have never been real; "chips and shavings" are as much use against death as gold and silver. His greed caused his downfall as much as his initial deal.

Washington Irving was known to be a social satirist, and it is reasonable to claim that he wrote "The Devil and Tom Walker" as a critique of the increasing greed and capitalism of the late years of the industrial revolution, since the story was published in 1824. Many of the thriving mills of this period were concentrated in the northeast, and Irving recalls that this area had been taken away from Native Americans and claimed by the English, many of whom originally came to the colonies for religious reasons. Tom Walker's fall from Puritanism into greed and immorality is symbolic of the history of New England from colonial times till the time he wrote the story.

Irving uses the rhetorical device of allusion when he refers to the pirate Kidd and his treasure.

Irving uses the epithet "Old Scratch" to identify the devil.

Irving uses an analogy or metaphor to describe the economic climate of Tom Walker's town:

...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.

• America's writer of fictional sketches, Washington Irving,inserts this message in his narrative of "The Devil and Tom Walker": If one embraces evil and makes a pact with Devil, he must 'pay the Devil his due.' 

When Tom takes what he believes to be a shortcut homeward, he encounters Old Scratch, who accosts him, scowling with red eyes. And, because he has lived with a "termagant wife that he did not even fear the Devil." Finding in Tom a kindred spirit, Old Scratch agrees to relinquish his treasures of Captain Kidd if Tom will work in his service. The Devil presses his finger on the forehead of Walker, saying, "There is my signature."

When he returns home, Tom divulges his "uneasy secret" to his wife. But, when she excitedly urges him to make the agreement with "the black man," Tom "flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction." So, Mrs. Walker decides to drive the bargain "on her own account" and sets out for the forest, never to be heard from again. Irving writes that Tom Walker "grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property" that he finally seeks her at the Indian fort; however, there is no sign of her having been there. At length, he hears a commotion in a cypress tree and spots a bundle tied in a checkered apron, Mrs. Walker's apron, in fact. Believing that it holds the treasure, Tom climbs the tree only to discover on his return to the ground that the apron contains her heart and liver. The termagant had met her match with the Devil, although Tom ponders, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"

While Tom seeks to renew his acquaintance with "the black woodsman," it takes some time before he agrees to any terms regarding the treasure. When the Devil demands that he become a slave trader, Tom dissents, but finally agrees only to becoming a usurer. So, having opened a business in Boston, Tom Walker accumulates bonds and mortgages and becomes "rich and mighty." But, as he grows old, Tom begins to worry about his soul and has a "lurking dread that the Devil, after all, would have his due." To prevent this payment, he perpetually keeps a "big Bible" in his office, and carries a small one with him at all times. Nevertheless, Tom is caught one day when "[T]he black man whisked him like a child into the saddle" and rushed out with him on a horse "that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills" and into the dark swamp. Afterwards, the townspeople search his property; however, nothing was found but chips and shavings in his iron chest which usually held gold and silver, and his home has burned to the ground. Only the troubled spirit of Tom Walker the usurer can be seen on many a stormy night.

• Thus, with elements of legend and satire against American economics and politics, Washington Irvingconveys his message. This is a message from which there is, indeed, a moral that matters: The temporal pleasures of money and power are certainly not worth the price of losing one's integrity, decency, and soul.

Irving in this tale takes a common story that is present in many different cultures and deliberately rewrites it for his own contemporary audience. Note how the devil introduces himself to Tom when they meet and how he mentions specifically American events that he has participated in:

I am he to whom the red men devoted 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 references to slave dealing and the Salem witches are examples of real historical events where great evil occurred in America as a result of people's greed and hypocrisy: fitting events indeed for the devil to be present at and involved in. The story, which is of course all about the dangers of being willing to do anything to gain wealth, is therefore given a distinct American feel, and Irving's rewrite applies the same moral to his own audience, pointing out that trying to gain wealth at the expense of everything else is bound to lead to a nasty end. Irving was writing at a time when America was still trying to forge its own identity as a relatively new nation, and so taking European legends and adapting them to suit America was one way in which this helped to create a distinctly American identity.