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Setting
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—The Household Silver :
Tom grows anxious as his wife fails to return from her visit with Old Scratch, though, as Irving reveals with great irony, the real object of Tom’s concern is the household silver that she took with her.
Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
In some of the most comedic sections of the story, Irving plays with the reader’s expectation that a husband would care for the wellbeing of his wife, revealing just how twisted Tom’s actual priorities are. When Tom goes to look for his wife in the swamp, he is excited to find her apron, but only because he assumes the silver might be bundled into it. He is merely disappointed, rather than horrified, to find “a heart and liver tied up in it.”
Rather than being outraged with Black Scratch over the loss of his wife, Tom recovers quickly, and even comes to think of her disappearance, ironically, as a favor. The "favor" is described using heavy verbal irony: “Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude,” Irving writes, and ultimately “He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness.” With dark humor, Irving underscores how morally degraded Tom is—his "fortitude" is actually callousness, and his idea of a "kindness" is actually cruelty.
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Explanation and Analysis—Tom's Bible :
Irving employs some pointed irony for the final scene of the story, in which Tom is carried away by Old Scratch despite his vain attempts to protect himself.
"Tom, you're come for," said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat-pocket and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the thunder-storm.
Realizing as he grows older that Old Scratch will return for his side of the bargain they've made, Tom takes various precautions in order to “cheat” the devil, such as attending church and carrying a Bible with him wherever he goes. Tom’s defenses prove useless, however, when Old Scratch finally comes to collect his dues. He is unable to reach his Bible in time because it is “buried” under a ruthless mortgage contract, which he refused to alter despite his client’s financial distress. With great irony, Irving suggests that Tom might have been able to save himself if he had simply granted his client’s request for more time before foreclosing on the mortgage. If he had only done that, the story suggests, he wouldn't have needed to make a show of carrying a Bible around at all. Though the reader expects Tom to genuinely prioritize his eternal soul at this point in the story, Tom remains more concerned with increasing his personal wealth until the very end, and his outward displays of religious piety prove to have been hollow all along.
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Explanation and Analysis—Friend to the Needy :
Irving employs situational irony when exposing the gulf between Tom’s attempts to pass himself off as a kind benefactor, and his truly selfish, unsympathetic nature.
Thus Tom was the universal friend to the needy, and acted like "a friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door.
In his business dealings as a usurer, Tom adopts the false persona of an open-hearted and generous man who lends money to those in need as an act of charity. This facade conceals the truth of Tom’s business: that he brutally exploits those in need and leaves them worse off than they were before, for his own personal gain. Irving’s language is thick with irony and sarcasm, then, when he describes Tom as a “universal friend to the needy,” as his actions reveal this to be a mere facade. In fact, Tom offers the most merciless contracts to those who are most financially desperate, ultimately leaving them as “dry as a sponge”—a simile that suggests that Tom squeezes every penny from them until they have nothing left.
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