Tom And Tom: Plot Summary

Our story begins with one Geoffrey Crayon telling the legend of Captain Kidd, a notorious pirate and the treasure he had (we are led to believe) sold his soul to protect. Mr. Crayon imparts that Kidd had hidden his treasure in a Massachusetts swamp near Boston and made a deal with the devil for its protection. Kidd died and the treasure was left in the swamp; the devil still guarding it. Skip time to 1727 in that same area of Massachusetts near the swamp where Tom Walker, a miserly man, lives with his equally miserly, and possibly abusive, wife. Tom’s wife is presented to us as a “scold”, Irving’s choice of words here serving to satirize the institution of marriage and the relationships he sees as possible to be inherent in it. In an effort to get away, even temporarily, from his termagant of a wife, one day Tom sets out for a walk and ends up in the …show more content…
While conducting business one day with a client who is begging for leniency on the grounds that Tom had already made much money from their dealings, Tom angrily proclaims “The devil take me if I have made a farthing!” At this, there are three knocks at the door. When Tom stepped out to see who was there, he beholds the black man, “Old Scratch,” upon a black horse. To his horror, he realizes that he has left his bibles inside. The devil snatches up Tom and rides away with him. Tom never returned and his chest of gold and silver turned to cinders, of no more use to him against the devil as if they were nothing; the author thus showing that all the material wealth in the world cannot save one from the evil in one’s own heart. Tom’s house catches fire the next day and nothing is left behind. It is said that he haunts the very Indian fort at which he and the devil had first met and made their bargain. Perhaps the final idea the author wished the reader to take away from the story? Sins, evil and wrongdoings will always be punished, even if it takes