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More handpicked essays just for you.
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The Techniques of Washington Irving
When you face a sudden change of circumstances, how do you react? That question is answered in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”. Rip is a simple, care free man who is nagged repeatedly by his wife for not taking care of his farm and family. One night, he goes into the woods, helps a strange man, and falls into a deep sleep. He wakes up 20 years later to find he is no longer a British subject and everything he knew has changed. In “Rip Van Winkle” the author used the mythical characteristic of settling in the past, described magical or mysterious events and their consequences, and conveyed a positive message about America. When you think of Colonial America, you think of beautiful, picturesque, and unblemished
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When Rip returns to his village, he has been gone twenty years. But he does not remember any of what happened during it. He says that, “the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night” (Irving 76). How could someone sleep for twenty years, and through a war, without knowing it? Irving is suggesting America is a place where anything can and does happen. It is a land of magical and unexplainable events. He mainly emphasizes America as a place of extreme beauty. When Rip rests during his walk in the woods he gazes down on the river valley. When he looked down, “he saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands” (Irving 67). The absolute serenity of this scene is breathtaking. Irving shows here the expansive untouched beauty of America. He is showing it to be a land of opportunity and possibility. Irving is showing America to be a land vaster, more beautiful, and having more potential than any of the European countries. His writing shows America to be a place superior to any other country in the
Rip is viewed in the town as a person who helped everyone with anything, except his own family- “…he was a simple ...
...ture of King George in “Rip Van Winkle.” Rip returns to his village twenty years after he left and realizes that someone has transformed the King into George Washington (541). Irving, realizing that much of life is merely a refashioning of the same ideas and structures into something that looks new, has taken an old German folk tale and turned it into a story of American life. We may live in a time with vastly different resources, technologies, and opportunities, but the urges that drive us are still the same.
We observe Rip showing acts of affection, when he goes wandering up the mountains and helps the short, stocky, and bearded man. Irving once stated, “He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load.” Most people when stumbled upon a odd man carrying a keg in the woods would run the other way, but not Rip. Rip Van Winkle, makes the mistake of helping the strange man and then falls asleep for twenty years. Although, we are told time after time it is good to help people, in a situation like this most of us would reconsider our options. This example of Rip Van Winkle undoubtedly shows Rip’s good intentions and
In “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving he writes about a simple man, Rip Van Winkle, who does just enough to get by in life. He lives in a village by the catskill mountains, and is loved by everyone in the village. He is an easy going man, who spends most of his days at the village inn talking with his neighbors, fishing all day, and wandering the mountains with his dog to refuge from his wife the thorn on his side. On one of his trips to the mountains Rip Van Winkle stumbles upon a group of men who offer him a drink, and that drink changes everything for Van Winkle. He later wakes up, twenty years later, and returns to his village were he notices nothing is the same from when he left. He learns that King George III is no longer in charge,
Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle with the American people in mind. At this time society was changing drastically. America was attempting to go through a struggle with forming their own identity. America was wanting to have an identity that would set them free from English culture and rule. Irving uses his main character, Rip Van Winkle, to symbolize America. Rip goes through the same struggles that America was going through at this time before and after the Revolution. Irving uses such great symbolism in this story to describe the changes that American society went through. This story covers a wide variety of time periods including: America before English rule, early American colonies under English rule, and America after the Revolutionary War.
“Rip Van Winkle” is set during the reign of King George the Third in a small village near the Catskill Mountains. Rip, the protagonist, states his residence is “a little village of great antiquity,” (page 62). In the opening of the story, the village where Rip held residence was remote and of great age. Villagers did not expand and can be described as complacent. Upon Rip’s return to the village after a mystical event, Rip is perplexed to see that the only thing recognizable is the natural surrounding features of the Catskill Mountains. The small village was now “larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared,” (page
Perhaps the nagging of his wife and his dread of labor is what Rip escaped from when he spent a good amount of his time at the village’s small inn in town. “Here they used to sit in the shade, through a long lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing.” (p.157) Even in the security of his peers, his wife would track Rip down, and scold all the men for being among each other, instead of being at home with their families. These surprise visits are what led to Rip’s escape into the Kaatskill Mountains.
Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, is the story of Rip Van Winkle, a seemingly lazy man, prone to habitual drunkenness who wanders into the mountains to escape the tyranny of his nagging wife Dame Van Winkle. During his alleged hunting trip, he meets with a mystical band of creatures “dressed in a quaint, outlandish fashion” ( (Irving p 476). Upon the encounter, he is offered a flagon of beverage of mysterious nature, which he consumes most eagerly and then falls into an alcoholic induced slumber. Rip awakens to find himself in a strange and confusing new world, which is both familiar and unfamiliar to him. He returns to his tiny village to find that new faces have replaced the old familiar ones. The house he once lived in has fallen into disrepair and his loved ones are nowhere to be found. Even the inn where he spent many an evening is no longer the same. Where there was once a portrait of King George, a new portrait of another George, this one named Washington, hangs in its place. The old familiar British flag has been replaced by a strange new flag with an “assemblage of stars and stripes” (Irving p 478). In what seems like at first like a fable, Rip Van Winkle, is actually an allegory of the American Revolution. Irving uses creative symbolism throughout the story to portray America before and after the Revolutionary War. Rip is representative of the American people, Dame Van Winkle shows qualities of King George and British rule and the townspeople represent the change in the American people.
This is when we know that the “nightmare” is over. When he goes back into town, people do not recognize him, “They all stare at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins.” This surprise is given because America [Rip Van Winkle] has changed, and the post-revolutionary war society could not picture themselves back to their pre-revolutionary war lives. Thus, they don’t recognize Rip and what he represents, a memory of the past. This symbolic voyage is an escape for the character to better understand himself, while it is an allegory of American
"Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving." Books & Literature Classics. Web. 12 May 2011. .
Have you ever imagined being asleep in the forest for twenty years, coming back home and not knowing what has gone on all those years of your absence? Rip Van Winkle went through that, and had to come back home and face some real changes. The author Washington Irving has some interesting characters whom he puts in his short stories. Irving puts some characters in his short stories to reflect on some of his life. For example, Irving has similarities between Rip Van Winkle being asleep in the forest 20 years and Irving was in Europe for seventeen writing short stories and being the governor’s aid and military secretary. These two situations are similar, because they both didn’t know what they were going to come back too and were gone for such a long period of time. Irving does put some of his own life into his short stories and with a reason for his self-reflective works.
"God knows,--[God is the only person at this time who knows what/who Rip is. Rip doesn't know, his son doesn't know, nobody knows except God himself]--" exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not myself-I'm somebody else-that's me yonder-no-that's somebody else, got into my shoes--[He sees that he has passed along his traits to his son, and his son has taken over Rip's identity and habits. We "grow" into other's shoes]-- -I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'...
Washington Irving's, "Rip Van Winkle" presented a tale of a "dreamer." Rip Van Winkle was a family man
Rip Van Winkle tells the story of a man who, on a trek into the Kaatskill mountains, mysteriously sleeps away twenty years of his life during the Revolutionary War. When he returns home, he finds that things have dramatically changed; King George no longer has control over the colonies, and many of his friends have either died or left town. At this point, the story reaches its climax, where Van Winkle realizes that his life may be forever changed.
When Rip awakens after a two decade slumber he is unaware of how much the world around him has changed. When Rip arrives to the town his only the only thing he is worrying about is the lecture he will be receiving from Dame “he dreaded to meet his wife” (Irving 86). Rip arrives in the town shocked when he finds the image of King George III replaced by George Washington. As Rip proceeds through the neighborhood that he once knew, he becomes confused and unable to comprehend the current government which he is now living under, so much that he is baffled when he is questioned by towns’ people as to “which side he voted?” (Irving 89). Although there were still plenty of loyalist around at the time of Rips awakening “The revolution awoke the fire within the American Spirit and the townspeople became alive with anticipation of their new government” (Freeman). Rip is now having to adapt to these patriotic