Examples Of Satire In The Devil And Tom Walker

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The Devil and Tom Walker Essay Satire is when someone makes fun of or criticizes a particular social group. Irving, the author of “The Devil and Tom Walker uses satire in his story when he criticizes religion, slave trade, and marriage. This story takes place in Boston around the 1700’s. Irving criticizes the elements of society today. He makes fun of religion, organized religions/religion types, and slave trade. In the story he says that the character Old Scratch “Amuses himself by presiding the persecutions of quakers and Anabaptists” (Pg22). In this quote, Irving criticizes religion. Before this time period, there was a religious group named the Puritans and they had left the England church hoping to find the purest form of religion. They only involved themselves with religion that was true to god's word. These people were quite dumb though since they accused actions of god even though normally they would stay true to his word. Another thing that is made fun of during the story is when Irving talks about Slave Trade. The character Tom in the story says that trade slave is even too evil for him to be involved with. This is proven when Tom says “He was bad enough in all conscience, but then the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave trader” …show more content…
Tom and his wife has continued to fight all the time. It was like a natural thing of abuse. It was a very unhealthy relationship that even when people had walked by there house, they were glad to be unmarried. “However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the Devil. He was determined not to obligate his wife, so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction’ (Pg23). There was even a reference in the story of when Tom compared his wife to the devil and how it wasn't really much different because of how mean she was. There is literally no love in the relationship and they were often called inmates because there house was compared to pretty much a
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