The Devil and Tom Walker
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40 free The Devil and Tom Walker trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker is one of the first great American short stories, and one of the funniest ever written about damnation. A stingy New Englander with an even stingier wife meets a grim stranger in a swamp, hears about a pirate's buried fortune, and has to decide what his soul is worth. It has been a staple of American literature classes for generations. This quiz walks through the whole story: the gloomy setting, the first meeting among the marked trees, the fate of Tom's wife, the terms of the bargain, Tom's career as a usurer, his late attempt to wriggle free, and the stormy ending. A handful of questions cover the author, the book the story came from and the older legend it echoes, along with the satire, symbols and figurative language that teachers like to test. Students can use it as a comprehension check after reading, and teachers get a ready-made multiple choice set that fits a Common Core short story unit. The opening questions are the gentlest, later ones reward close readers, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Devil and Tom Walker, what does Tom find tied up in his missing wife's checked apron?
A heart and liver
A heart and liver are all that remain of her, hanging in a swamp tree. Tom had scrambled up hoping to recover the valuables she carried off.
Q 02Which business does Tom Walker flatly refuse to enter, even though the devil proposes it first?
The slave trade
The slave trade is the one line Tom will not cross: the devil wants him to fit out a ship, and the miser says no. He happily settles for ruining borrowers as a usurer instead.
Q 03Why does Tom Walker at first turn down the devil's offer of a pirate's buried treasure?
To spite his wife
To spite his wife, who nags him to accept, Tom refuses out of sheer contradiction. The narrator says he would not be damned just to please her.
Q 04By which folksy nickname does Tom Walker identify the devil during their first meeting in the swamp?
Old Scratch
Old Scratch is the name Tom throws at the stranger, who answers with a half-civil nod. The devil has just listed his other titles, including grand master of the Salem witches.
Q 05After Tom Walker vanishes, what do trustees find filling his iron chest in place of his fortune?
Chips and shavings
Chips and shavings fill the chest, as if swept from the devil's woodpile. Tom's bonds and mortgages have turned to cinders, and two skeletons lie in the stable where his horses were.
Q 06What does Tom Walker feel toward the devil after learning what became of his quarrelsome wife?
Gratitude
Gratitude, of all things: Tom decides the devil has done him a kindness. He consoles himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife.
Q 07In The Devil and Tom Walker, which real pirate is said to have buried treasure under the oaks?
Captain Kidd
Captain Kidd hid his gold beneath a giant oak, the old stories say, and the devil took it under his guardianship. The narrator adds that he always does so with ill-gotten treasure.
Q 08What mark does the devil leave on Tom Walker's forehead as proof that the treasure is real?
A burnt fingerprint
A burnt fingerprint is the devil's signature, pressed on with a single touch. Tom later finds the dark print scorched into his skin, and nothing will rub it off.
Q 09What does Tom Walker find cut into the bark of the tall trees in the devil's swamp?
Names of leading colonists
Names of leading colonists mark the trunks, one tree for each great man of the colony. A tree comes down when its owner dies, and the devil claims it.
Q 10In his fearful old age, what does Tom Walker always carry in his coat pocket?
A small Bible
A small Bible rides in his pocket so the devil can never catch him unprotected. A great folio copy sits on his desk too, with his green spectacles marking the page while he drives hard bargains.
Q 11In which city does Tom Walker open his counting house once the devil's bargain is struck?
Boston
Boston is where Tom sets up, a few miles from his swamp, just as hard times have left the colony short of cash. Desperate borrowers soon crowd his door.
Q 12What does the devil carry on his shoulder when Tom Walker first sees him sitting on a stump?
An axe
An axe rests on the stranger's shoulder, and the freshly felled tree Tom is sitting on shows he has been busy. He also has a red sash, wild dark hair and a pair of great red eyes.
Q 13Why is Tom Walker crossing the gloomy swamp on the evening he first meets the devil?
Taking a shortcut home
Q 21What does Tom Walker's walking staff turn up from the soil as he rests deep in the swamp?
A cloven skull
A cloven skull turns up with a tomahawk still buried in it, a relic of old frontier wars. Tom gives it a kick, and a gruff voice orders him to leave it alone.
Q 22What does Tom Walker's wife carry into the swamp as a peace offering for the devil?
The household silver
The household silver goes with her: the teapot, the spoons and every portable thing of value, bundled in her apron. Tom frets over the property at least as much as over his wife.
Q 23Whose mortgage is Tom Walker about to foreclose at the moment the devil comes for him?
A land speculator
Taking a shortcut home puts Tom among quagmires and rotting trunks. The narrator notes dryly that, like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.
Q 14Tom Walker's bargain is often compared to which German legend, later reworked by Goethe?
Faust
Faust, the scholar who sells his soul for knowledge and pleasure, is the model. Washington Irving swaps the learned doctor for a New England miser who only wants gold.
Q 15How does the aging Tom Walker try to cheat the devil out of the terms of their bargain?
Going loudly to church
Going loudly to church is his plan: Tom prays as if heaven could be taken by force of lungs. The louder his Sunday devotion, the more he has sinned that week.
Q 16What happens to Tom Walker's grand house soon after the devil carries him away?
It burns to the ground
It burns to the ground, the last of his wealth to vanish. The trustees sent to settle his estate had already found nothing left to administer.
Q 17Why, the narrator jokes, does Tom Walker feel no fear on meeting the devil?
Years with a fierce wife
Years with a fierce wife have hardened him, the narrator explains. Tom had lived so long with a scold that the devil himself held no terrors.
Q 18Which Washington Irving character from before Tom Walker sleeps through the American Revolution?
Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle dozes off in the Catskills and wakes two decades later. Irving published that tale in 1819, five years before sending Tom Walker into the swamp.
Q 19What does Tom Walker do in a flash of temper moments before three loud knocks sound at his door?
Swears a careless oath
Swears a careless oath: denying he has made any profit from the man begging for mercy, Tom names the devil as his forfeit. The devil takes him at his word and is waiting outside with an impatient horse.
Q 20Which group does the narrator of The Devil and Tom Walker warn directly in the closing lines?
Money-brokers
Money-brokers get the warning, and the narrator calls them griping ones. The tale ends as a sermon against anyone who grows rich by squeezing the desperate.
A land speculator, a man Tom had professed to love as a friend, begs for a few months' grace. Tom refuses him even one more day.
Q 24The devil tells Tom Walker to lend at two percent a month; what does Tom offer to do?
Double it
Double it is Tom's instant answer: he swears he will charge four. The devil is so delighted with his pupil that the two shake hands on the bargain at once.
Q 25How does the newly rich Tom Walker treat the vast house he builds to show off his wealth?
Leaves it unfinished
Leaves it unfinished and unfurnished, because finishing would cost him. The narrator blames ostentation for the building and parsimony for the bare rooms.
Q 26How is Tom Walker said to have buried his saddled horse, ready to outrun the devil on the last day?
Upside down
Upside down, feet uppermost: Tom reasoned the world would be turned over on the last day, leaving the horse ready to mount. The narrator calls it probably an old wives' fable.
Q 27Which real statesman defends a farmer's soul in a 1936 story inspired by Tom Walker's tale?
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster argues the case before a jury of the damned in Stephen Vincent Benét's story. Benét drew much of his inspiration from Washington Irving's miser and his swamp devil.
Q 28In The Devil and Tom Walker, why did the pirate never come back for the gold he buried?
He was hanged
He was hanged as a pirate after being seized in the colony and shipped across the Atlantic. That left the gold under the oaks in the devil's keeping until Tom came along.
Q 29Washington Irving, creator of Tom Walker, was an early American writer of which literary movement?
Romanticism
Romanticism prized imagination, wild nature and the supernatural, all on show in Tom's haunted swamp. Irving's Gothic stories of 1819 and 1820 were among the first American works in that vein.
Q 30What does the narrator say the screeching, ungreased wheels of Tom Walker's carriage sound like?
Souls of his debtors
Souls of his debtors, groaning as he squeezes them, is the narrator's comparison. Tom keeps the carriage out of vanity but grudges the grease, and he half starves the horses too.