In the movie and the short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster", there is a battle between the forces of good and evil. Although the story allows the reader to mentally picture the scenes and the movie does the depicting for the viewer, there are several similarities in each script. Some of these similarities are the way the characters are depicted and the final scene. There are several incongruous scenes between the short story and the way the movie unfolds. The differences are the amount of time that is spent on the character development, also there are some scenes added into the movie such as the harvest dance and the reminder of the contract. There are three main characters in this short story/movie. They are Scratch, Daniel Webster, and Jabez Stone. The actors picked for the roles fit almost perfectly to the descriptions of the characters in the short story. Scratch is described as a " soft-spoken, dark-dressed stranger.white teeth.were filed to a point". As shown in the movie the actor was also a very darkly clad man. He also had a very soft, hypnotic voice and whenever he smiled his teeth were very shiny and pointy. The man described as "the biggest man in the country.when he stood up to speak, stars and stripes came right out of the sky.and when he argued a case, he could turn on the harps of the blessed and the shaking of the earth underground" was Daniel Webster. In the movie the actor who filed his role was a very big man with a powerful voice. The last character, Jabez Stone, wasn't given a very active role in the short story, but he was described as " an unlucky man.he had a good wife and children, but the more he had the less there was to feed them.".
In the movie Jabez is seen more throughout the unfolding of the tale and his family life was a little different. He had only one child and that was after the contract with the devil was made. The ending to the short story took place in Jabez's barn and consisted of a jury filled with the ruthless dead.