Symbolism In The Devil And Tom Walker

The short story “The Devil and Tom walker” by Washington Irving is a classic dark romantic story. Although the story has many elements in it, symbolism is seen the most. The three main symbols are the Devil being a representation of temptations in life, the forest represents the bad side of life and the trees showing the lives of many men that have done bad.
The first symbol is the Devil. The Devil in the story represents temptations. Early in the story Tom's wife goes out to find riches in the forest she had heard about from her husband. In her journey she never makes it back home(295). This shows that the belongings he presented showed temptation of greediness. The riches are associated with the devil because he has the treasure meaning
this shows that even in good times, the brightness representing happiness, the bad side is still dark. Often times mood is represented with color and shades. Happiness is a bright sunny color. Unhappiness is dark and gloomy. The forest is always dark and gloomy never bright and sunny. that connection shows that with dark colors the forest is unhappy. not as in the trees and plants are sad but thats theres a dark unhappy feeling in the forest. since the setting if the forest is unhappy it can represent the bad part of life. Another point that makes the forest a bad part of life is that it's the opposite side of the good land(291). the good land is the good side of life and the opposite side is the bad side, that being the forest. the dark side is where the treasure was buried opposite of the good side making the forest the bad. the deals made in the forest(296). tom makes his deal in the bad part of life. the bad part being the forest. kidd buried his treasure in the forest, the deal of the devil keeping over it was there as well making the forest a dark time is people's
In the forest there are threes with rotten cores in them.(293). In people the bad can't always be seen on the outside. Like in the old saying you can't judge a book by it's cover, well you can by its interior. WIth the interior being the tree's core the metaphor carries over. The trees may have looked good or stable on the outside but like the men they represented the core was rotten and putrid. The rotten core can also show how a person started out strong and vibrant but eventually in a sense died inside and rotted away from all the badness and evil the person has done. When a tree is young and full grown they are hard and stable this can show the morals, but after a disease such as heart rot representing bad decisions the strong core starts to decay and rot leaving a weak frail body. Another point is the trees had the names of men who had done others wrong for there personal gain.(293) When going through the forest he sees trees that have names of men who have hurt the lives of other people. these names on the trees tie back with the core being the body of the trees, the names act as a label . Also the three with crowninshield is cut down and the devil says it's ready to be burned, later when tom returns back to town mr crowninshield had died.With that when the tree went down so did the man whose name was on it. Deacon peabody's name was on one of the