Life Post Revolution Everything and everyone is constantly changing whether people realize it or not. Life after the revolutionary war influenced a lot of the changes that made America. New ideals and customs were beginning to form and people had to learn to conform to these changes in order to survive. Washington Irving depicts this in his writing “Rip Van Winkle”, along with Caroline Stansbury Kirkland’s writing “A New Home-Who’ll Follow”. Although, with some minor differentials, Kirkland and Irving depict similar themes in adaptation and simulating to culture unknown to them. Many earlier writers had the assumption that the west was filled with savages and the uneducated. Mrs. Clavers herself, shares this stereotypical idea due to the …show more content…
Clavers found it a bit harder to befriend her neighbors in Michigan. Being from Boston, the Clavers family were used to a specific way of living that opposed that of the western frontier. Not only did Mrs. Cavers have pre made assumptions of westerners, but her neighbors have also believed that because the Clavers family were from eastern civilization that they thought of themselves too good for the simple frontier life. On one occasion Mrs. Clavers found herself immensely ill and unable to care for the rest of her family who was also beginning to fall of illness. She expected her neighbors to come and help relieve her of some household duties but they never came. She wrote that “my neighbors showed but little sympathy on the occasion. They had imbibed the idea that we held ourselves above them, and chose to take it for granted, that we did not need their aid,” (175). Instead of her neighbors Mrs. Clavers relied on the service of a nurse who aided the family in household duties and nursed them back to …show more content…
The small town was isolated from the rapid industrialization in the pre revolution era which influenced the Dutch to live a simple, traditional, slow life style. In this era Rip flourished. Rip was known and loved by the whole town because he would come to aid anybody at the first sound of distress. Despite of all the help he provided to the town he did not participate in his life at home, “Rip was ready to attend to any body’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his family in order, it was impossible,”(31). He neglected his farm because he believed it to be a useless piece of land and found a greater reward in helping others with their farm. He also neglected his children as they basically grew fatherless. Rip would seldom be at home due to what he describes as a shrew of a wife would be constantly barking orders at him to be participate more in the household and the children’s life. In Irving’s story, Dame Van Winkle was depicted negatively by Rip. Her concerned were primarily in the wellbeing of the family and in the absence of Rip, she was forced to take on more responsibilities at home raising and providing for her family which in turn led her to become bitter towards Rip, who seemed to busy helping everyone else. Her constant nagging resulted in Rip voyaging off to the mountains
His wife would bad mouth him and yell at him, but Rip wouldn't do much
Rip is viewed in the town as a person who helped everyone with anything, except his own family- “…he was a simple ...
Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe were both writers who exemplified the writing style of the Romantic era. Both writers used their great talents to take the reader into the story. For example, Irving, in “Rip Van Winkle”, starts the story by saying, “Whoever has made a courage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains.” He also involves the reader in the story by taking us into the everyday lives of the Van Winkles and goes into some detail describing Rip’s “business”. Poe also demonstrates his ability to pull the reader into the story. In “The Fall of the House Usher” he uses extensive descriptions of the settings to give the reader the feeling of being there while the story is developing around them. The writers are also similar in the use of tone in their works. Irving’s use of tone in his stories is typically lighthearted, yet dramatic. This is demonstrated in “Rip Van Winkle” when Rip comes back from the “Kaatskills” and is talking to all the people in the town. There, he finds his son and daughter and asks, “Where’s your mother?” By asking this question, Irving implies both curiosity and even fear if Dame Van Winkle is still around. This humorous approach to the subject of Rip’s wife, makes light of ...
He is hardworking, as seen in the fact that “all day he had been walking” (194) in order to gather the “necessities” (194). He is also uncompromising, as seen in the fact that his decree to his child to stop interacting with the son of the shiftless neighbour to be “unalterable” (193). Finally, he can also be seen as sympathetic. Despite the fact that he despises the behaviour of his neighbor and the neighbor’s child, and that he was “foot-sore as well as hungry” (195), he decides to save the crying child, whom he thought was the neighbor’s. By reaching an epiphany, to listen to his conscience and save the child. The settler is also described as prosperous, owning a “substantial frame-house” ().
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
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,
One main issue of the story was one of identity, especially at this time in history. Rip was having difficulty finding himself throughout the story. His wife constantly nagged at him probably all in good reason. His farm was fading away. He was lazy and unproductive. He underwent many emotional changes throughout the story. He didn't appreciate what he had, and before he could even blink it was gone. Life is too short to not appreciate everything in it and enjoy it to the fullest.
Rip van wrinkle is a story of an man who slept for 20 year and wakes up and find ever thing strange and unknown. He is man who wants tired of listing to his wife and wish she was gone. He was the person who was just an idol nether contributation nether degraadating the society. Washington irving has excellently used the example of Rip van wrinkle as an idol who was trying to escape from his responsibility and trying to do that he missed important historical struggle period of his country. He try to convey from the story that if you try to escape from your responsibility than you may miss time that is really worthy of remembering for. Rip van wrinkle was not responsible and he escape from the reality and land on his own imagination world where
“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
In RIP Van Winkle, Dam Van Winkle is abusive, nagging, and sarcastic. In Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving states that “but what courage can with stand the ever-during and all besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue.” He seems to imply that he did not like women who gave their opinions and spoke their mind. It seems that Rip is going into the woods to escape his wife.
In Rip Van Winkle, Irving shows his doubts in the American Identity and the American dream. After the Revolutionary war, America was trying to develop its own course. They were free to govern their own course of development; however, some of them had an air of uncertainties on their own identity in this new country. Irving was born among this generation in the newly created United States of America, and also felt uncertainty about the American identity. Irving might be the writer that is the least positive about being an American. The main reason for this uncertainty is the new born American has no history and tradition while the Europe has a great one accumulated for thousands of years. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, Irving borrows an old European tale to make it take place in America. This tale related to the Dutch colonists haunts the kaatskill mountains. In order to highlight the American identity, Irving praises the “majestic” mountains which Europe lacks. He describes the mountains that “their summits…will glow and light up like a crown of glory” Nevertheless, the use of these ancient explorers into Rip Van Winkle only to show that although American has formed its own identity, no one can cut its connection with Europe. No wonder when America was still under tyranny of the British rule, some people still cannot cut the blood relationship with Europe. Therefore, the American identity is blurred by their relationship with Europe since then.
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.
When I was younger the world was such an innocent, delightful place. People were kind, and always willing to help. As I have grown I have found that my views of the world and the people in it have changed; I don 't find it to be as innocent or delightful. I have slowly become to notice the wicked around me. Nathaniel Hawthorne 's "Young Goodman Brown" and Washington Irving 's "Rip Van Winkle" both convey changes in their views of the people and world around them.
Washington Irving's, "Rip Van Winkle" presented a tale of a "dreamer." Rip Van Winkle was a family man
That Van Winkle is confused seems obvious and is quite understandable, but this confusion extends beyond the bizarre sequence of events encountered. When Rip notices the person that the township refers to as Rip Van Winkle, it is as though he is looking into a mirror, for this person portrays a "precise counterpoint of himself." Although Rip visually sees this other person, his examination becomes a personal reflect...