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Sample paragraph on the function of imagery in "The Devil and Tom Walker".
Tom walker’s hypocrisy and greed are clearly shown in the imagery describing the devil catching him unaware. It is only after Tom Walker “secured the good things of this world, [that] he began to feel anxious about those of the next” (286). Despite becoming a “violent churchgoer” who “prayed loudly and strenuously” (286), Tom remained a man deeply concerned only with “exact[ing] good pay and good security” (285). His dread of the devil and his effort to “cheat [the devil] out of the conditions [of their deal] (286) left him to “[carry] a small Bible in his coat pocket…[and] a great folio Bible on his counting desk” (286). It is in his final transaction that we see Tom for who he really is---a greedy hypocrite. As he is approaching an unlucky customer begging for “a few months’ indulgence” (286), he “[loses] his patience and his piety” and states, “The devil take me if I have made a farthing!” (287). When the devil does come, Tom’s “big Bible [was] on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose” (287). It is clear that despite “the clamor of his Sunday devotion” and his show of piety, Tom Walker remained a greedy, merciless man who cared more about “squeez[ing] his customers closer and closer” (285) than seeking eternal salvation.