Parallels in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and America's War of Independence
The story of Rip Van Winkle is well known throughout American culture. As one of America's most popular short stories, few school children have not heard of Rip Van Winkle's twenty-year slumber or imagined his long, gray beard. In the telling and re-telling of this mysterious tale, the original context of the story itself has, for the most part, been forgotten. Few Americans are aware of how the story originated, and in what context it was first presented to the public. "Rip Van Winkle" first appeared as a part of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book. This was a collection of various short works, ideas, thoughts, and pictures. "Rip van Winkle" was only a part of this collection, but eventually gained a great deal of popularity in its own right. When considering this story, it is important to keep in mind the original context and its relation to other works within The Sketch Book. However, as "Rip Van Winkle" has stood on its own in American culture, there is also a place for examining the story apart from The Sketch Book. When doing this, certain symbolism becomes apparent. Washington Irving uses symbolism in "Rip Van Winkle" to relate Rip's life and experiences to the situation of the American colonies in relation to Great Britain and the War of Independence.
In this interpretation of the symbolism in "Rip Van Winkle", the marriage between Rip Van Winkle and Dame Van Winkle represents the union between the American colonies and Great Britain. The characters themselves possess certain attributes which symbolize the perceived characteristics of the two entities. Dame Van Winkle is usually unhappy with Rip. She has cer...
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...respectively. Rip's experience in the Kaatskill Mountains ultimately sheds light on the changes of the American public, and Washington Irving accomplishes his purpose of establishing a tradition for the American short story.
Works Cited
Barbarese, JT. "Landscapes of the American Psyche." Sewanee Review. 100 (1992): 599-603.
Dawsone, Hugh J. "Recovering 'Rip Van Winkle': A Corrective Reading."
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Rubin-Dorsky, Jeffrey. "The Value of Storytelling: 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' in the Context of The Sketch Book". Modern Philology. 82:4 (1985): 393-406.
Shear, Walter. "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories." Studies in Short Fiction. 25:3 (1988): 249-259.
There is a great deal of controversy over the trying and sentencing of juvenile offenders today. Many will argue that because the severity of Juvenile crimes has risen, the severity of its consequences should rise; however, no matter how serious the crime is, juvenile offenders tried as adults receive far worse than they deserve. The majority of Juveniles tried as adults are hardly given any form of human rights. Adult jails are not the environment children should have to experience, especially those sentenced for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes. There are other solutions to reducing juvenile crime. It does not take adult court to straighten out kids on the wrong path. Most children are not even able to recognize that what they had done is wrong. There may be no perfect solution to reducing juvenile crime, but there are ways far more effective than adult trying and sentencing.
Tindall, G.B. & Shi, D.E. (2010). America a narrative history 8th edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p.205-212.
In an English interpretation, one could see Rip Van Winkle as the mother country or England. Rip is “a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband .” (430) To an English citizen reading this story, it could easily represent the English monarchy. For years before the revolution, America had defied the King by refusing to pay taxes; support the militia that was protecting it from the French, Spanish, and Indians; and in many ways hindering progress in the colonies. England could easily have been seen as “hen-pecked” in the ways in which it handled the colonies. Many of the tax acts, such as the Stamp act, were ignored and monarchy was viewed as inept in dealing with the colonies. The Crown levied no penalties against the colonist when these acts were defied. The Crown just accepted not getting the money.
...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.
The Juvenile Justice system, since its conception over a century ago, has been one at conflict with itself. Originally conceived as a fatherly entity intervening into the lives of the troubled urban youths, it has since been transformed into a rigid and adversarial arena restrained by the demands of personal liberty and due process. The nature of a juvenile's experience within the juvenile justice system has come almost full circle from being treated as an adult, then as an unaccountable child, now almost as an adult once more.
To understand better Van Winkle's predicament we must first understand his character and how he was viewed
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 ...
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,
This paper will discuss the history of the juvenile justice system and how it has come to be what it is today. When a juvenile offender commits a crime and is sentenced to jail or reform school, the offender goes to a separate jail or reforming place than an adult. It hasn’t always been this way. Until the early 1800’s juveniles were tried just like everyone else. Today, that is not the case. This paper will explain the reforms that have taken place within the criminal justice system that developed the juvenile justice system.
This chapter examines the juvenile justice diversion as an alternative to formal adjudication of juvenile justice and the placement of children, particularly residential placement. Juvenile Diversion is based on the premise that youth exposure to justice may be more harmful than beneficial (Shelden, 1999).
Feld in Abolish the Juvenile Court (1999), there are inherent flaws in the juvenile justice system because it cannot act as a social welfare system and also provide criminal social control. Juvenile courts punish delinquents in the name of treatment but deny them protections available to criminals (Feld, 1999). Youths whom judges remove from their homes and incarcerate in intuitions for long periods of time receive substantially fewer procedural safeguards than do convicted adults. Juvenile courts provide inadequate social welfare and lack the necessary resources needed to treat these
Working for the Washington, D.C. Public Defender’s Office in the fall of 1995, I witnessed first hand the inadequacies of our legal system with respect to juvenile offenders. I believe that juvenile justice is a worthwhile topic because of its relevance to every member of American society. If we do not help children in trouble today, they will not have the capacity to be functi...
The generalised or stereotyped characters are from the American people before and after Revolutionary War. Dame Van Winkle and Rip are stock characters that have been found in literature the irksome wife and the henpecked husband as Rip Van Winkle’s character represents the American society as perceived by England whereas his wife, Dame Van Winkle portrays England. This element between the free will loving Rip and his overbearing wife executes a key idea of the American Dream
There is ongoing debate as to what should be done with juvenile courts. Should juvenile courts be abolished or just reformed? There are a number of reasons offered for each viewpoint, and the ultimate goal is trying to figure out which option would be most beneficial for juveniles. Juvenile delinquency is a continuous problem in the United States. It is also considered an issue that all of society needs to take part in trying to solve or at least diminish. Despite the number of social controls that can aid in dealing with delinquency much of the burden is placed on the juvenile justice system. It is well understood that the juvenile courts have a lot of imperfections. These imperfections are what caused the calls for reform or abolishment. There are a number of recommendations that Barry C. Feld offered that could serve as reforms. Some of his recommendations pertain to rehabilitation, welfare, resources and rights. Despite these recommendations Feld still prefers abolishment or more specifically creating an integrated system. Before discussing whether abolishment or reform is a better option it is important to address the recommendations Feld suggested as areas of the juvenile court system that need reform.
Juvenile delinquency is a problem that affects society as a whole. Understanding Juvenile delinquency is important because it is part of trying to figure out how people in American society should react to it; specifically, in terms of law enforcement officers, their agencies, and State legislators. When deviant behavior becomes "continuous, chronic and widespread it gets perceived as a significant part of the population as threatening to the general well-being of society" (Thompson and Bynum, 2010, p. 44). This is a societal problem that requires attention from various forms of social control. However, a lot of the burden is absorbed by an imperfect Juvenile Justice System. As time has passed, argument has ensued over what should be done with the Juvenile Court System. Should the court system be reformed or simply abolished? Barry C. Feld believes that there are enough factors to support the abolishment of the Juvenile Court System and supports an integrated approach (Hickey, 2010). Others, like Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg, believe that the transfer of kids "into adult court is unnecessary, harmful and racist" (Kelly, 2010, Lecture Unit 3). While reforming the system may seem like the best idea, there are certain factors that inhibit proper changes from being made. Creating a separate court system for juveniles has caused a number of consequences for youth.