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Identify two inferred cultural attitudes the story conveys. Identify the situation that brings each to light in the text, and explain what cultural...

Two cultural attitudes which might be deduced from Washington Irving's short story "The Devil and Tom Walker" involve slavery and usury. Although slavery thrived in the southern states in the early 1700's it was beginning to be more and more limited in northern states, especially in Massachusetts, the setting of the story. In fact, a strident abolitionist movement was burgeoning in Boston, leading to the eventual banning of slavery in the state in 1783. In the 1800's, Massachusetts was even among the first states to allow interracial marriage and desegregate public schools. In Irving's story, Tom Walker reflects this attitude. While he is quite eager to get the gold of "old scratch," he will not agree to outfit a ship and deal in the slave trade. In this refusal, Tom shows the embedded cultural attitude of his time and place against the buying and selling of human beings. 


Usury is the lending of money with high interest rates. From the beginning economic times, usury has generally been frowned upon. Aristotle condemned it, at times the Catholic church outlawed it, and Shakespeare even wrote a play, The Merchant of Venice, about a villainous moneylender. In early 1700's New England, there was certainly a prejudice against usurious lenders and that is why "old scratch" insists upon Tom becoming one. Tom is eager to do so and even offers a higher interest than even the Devil suggests. Yet, despite its bad reputation, moneylending became an important and popular institution in colonial America. Economists of the day including Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham argued that a thriving capitalist economy required a moneylending component and that the rate of interest would depend upon economic conditions at the time. That Tom would become wildly successful in his business as a broker is very much a part of the existing cultural attitudes about money. People in a volatile capitalist economy were willing to borrow at whatever rate they could get as they banked that improved conditions would ultimately make up for any money lost due to high interest rates.

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