In the story “The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom is in a relationship in which he abuses his wife and she abuses him. This abuse is a result of their financial situation and their personal unhappiness. One day tom goes to the woods and sees a “dark-skinned man” which is actually the devil. The devil offers Tom riches as a bribe for his soul. Tom goes back to tell his wife about this offer. She tells him to accept it, but he decides that he is not going to do anything that she wants because he is not about to do anything that makes her happy because of the hatred between them. Angered, the wife goes to the woods to tries to accept the offer on behalf of Tom, instead the devil kills her. After searching for his wife in the woods, and realizing that he did have feelings for her, Tom decides to take the devil’s offer out of greed and grief for losing his wife. Tom becomes a very powerful, heartless, and greedy broker after finding out that something has happened to his wife. He is prideful, vain, and materialistic. He builds a large home and does not furnish it. He is more concerned with what everyone else thinks about what he has than anything else. An example is the starvation of his horse. He has so much money but doesn’t even buy food for his horse because he is stingy. In the end, Tom feels guilty and regrets making these horrible decisions. “The Devil and Tom Walker” is a great example of how money causes unhappiness, it shows how everything isnt what it is put out to be, and how money causes greed.
One of the things that this story is related to is how money causes unhappiness. Tom and his wife were poor. They were angry about being poor and this caused fights that resulted in mental and physical abuse. Even after tom became wealthy, he was still unhappy and started feeling regretful for taking the devil’s offer of riches. He began to go to church vigorously to try to rid himself of his guilty feelings. “Still, in spite of all this