Rip Van Winkle Essay

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

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