Irving doesn’t reveal what Tom’s occupation is at the beginning of “The Devil and Tom Walker,” only that he is a “meagre, miserly fellow” who lives a few miles from Boston with his equally miserly wife. Tom is frequently at odds with his wife, and the couple fight constantly; the husband is often the victim of his wife’s physical abuse, as “his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words” (221). Tom shows a measure of fearlessness and independence in taking the shortcut through the swamp despite the superstitions surrounding it. He also has a measure of self-awareness and recognizes the devil’s identity fairly quickly: “The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,” said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old Scratch.” (224)

Thus, Tom enters the deal with Old Scratch in full awareness of what he is doing. The narrator mentions that “Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did not eve fear the devil” (224). Tom’s pact with Old Scratch has been well prepared by many years of miserliness and domestic strife.

The desire for monetary gain motivates Tom almost entirely; his seeming generosity as a money lender—others consider him a “universal friend of the needy” (229)—is in fact another form of greed, since he charges high interest rates.