Irving Hardships

Through the course of “Rip Van Winkle” you stumble upon many remarkable and strange characters. Washington Irving reveals these complex characters through humor and exaggeration. Irving not only gives readers the characters

Washington Irving is known as being one of the most famous American authors in history. He has created fresh and exciting stories such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Devil and Tom Walker,” and “Rip Van Winkle” that continue to captivate those who read them even today. In these three stories, Irving takes a stance on what the early Americas were like as he creates settings full of both mystery and wonder. His settings are symbols of both America’s mystery and potential, and he uses personification and motifs to convey this message.

The hyperbole in Irving’s writing becomes clear as he begins to describe his main character’s attributes. Irving uses humor to bring attention to certain details to make them memorable. By using exaggeration and metaphor together, he makes a hyperbole, to help contribute to the experience. Irving demonstrates humor being developed by hyperbole when he writes, “The revenue arising from his school would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda”(7). What Irving attempts to convey is, while Ichabod was a school teacher, he did not get paid enough for him to be comfortable, the main reason being that he had a large appetite.

The short story I have chosen to read by Washington Irving is 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.'; This story takes place in a little village on the Hudson River which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally known as Tarry Town. The main character in the story, Ichabod Crane, who 'tarried'; in Sleepy Hollow came about for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. The main point of the story began with the arrival of a Negro with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a party at the Van Tassel's mansion. After receiving the good news, Ichabod fixed up his best and only suit and borrowed a horse from Hans Van Ripper, in order to impress Mynheer Van Tassel's daughter, Katrina. He did so

In Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the conflict between Enlightenment and Romantic ideals is narrativized. Irving’s story is an exploration of the conflict between these two schools of thought. Irving uses his setting, his characters, and his “moral” (or lack thereof) to critique the Enlightenment. At first reading, “Sleepy Hollow” may seem no more than a dreamy folk tale. But when read in the context of the emerging resistance to Enlightenment thinking, it reveals itself to be a striking denunciation of the ideals of the Enlightenment.

This takes the metaphor a step further by making the comparison between Rip Van Winkle finally escaping his wife forever and America finally getting freedom from the English government. This aspect of the story gives a lot of insight into how Irving viewed the country before and after the Revolution, and how America was in search of their own identity from England.

John Irving begins his novel with one of the most iconic introductory lines in modern literature; introducing a character who is a great source of pain and anguish, yet the ultimate source behind the narrator’s belief in God (Irving 3). In this paradoxical sentiment the theme of the book born, what follows it is a journey that is different from any other. John Wheelwright, the narrator, tells a story of his best friend Owen Meany and what effect he has had on John’s own life, while concurrently interjecting the plot with information about the occurrence in the world around him and how it relates back to Owen. Through the uses of sporadic but continuous plot development John Irving develops a self acclaimed Christ-like character whose

As the new world struggled to gain impendence from its mother country, Britain, native authors also try to develop their own style of writings. It quickly became evident that the search for a native literature became a national obsession. Then with the triumph of American independence, many at the time saw this as a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Greatness came with a strong nation and thousands of poems and stories that still shape our nation. The recent revolution greatly expressed the heart of the American people. However, it would take another fifty years of development throughout American before it produced the first great generation of American writers such as, Washington Irving, Ralph

Washington Irving is the author of the tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” that was written in the nineteenth century (Baym 25). Irving was born in New York City on April 3rd, 1783 and was the last of eleven children. At home, Irving read a wide range of English literature and delighted in many other writers, including Shakespeare, Oliver Goldsmith, and Laurence Sterne. In 1830 Irving bought and began refurbishing a house along the Hudson River near Tarrytown (Baym 25). The beginning of Irving’s tale opens up with the description of the charming Hudson Valley region of Sleepy Hollow near Tarrytown. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” represents a popular tale in Irving’s book The Sketch Book. It’s ghostly tale that talks about a mysterious Headless Horseman that is said to be a Hessian trooper who lost his head in battle. It is said that every night, the Headless Horseman roams the countryside in search of his head. There is an unlikely hero in this tale named Ichabod Crane, but to the people of Sleepy Hollow the real hero is Brom Bones.

John Irving’s childhood reflects many of the themes throughout A Prayer for Owen Meany. He was

The first aspect of society being criticized by Irving is the institution of marriage. In the story, Tom and his wife argue continuously and can never get along. They would call eachother names like when Tom called his wife “tergent wife”, and “they even conspired to cheat on eachother”. This is criticizing the institution of marriage because it is performing acts that a married couple would not do.

      After writing his first few books, Irving was left disappointed that although the literary critics embraced them, for the general masses his books fell on deaf ears.  (Hill 250) Unfortunately it is the general case that the masses and the elite are not in

Washington Irving was born in 1783 and died in 1859. He was the first American writer to receive an international literary reputation through his works, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” He was also known as one of the inventors of modern short story and was able to financially support himself as a writer. He usually wrote comical pieces, but produced works with darker themes based on historical context. As for the historical context of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” it was based on the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, between America and Great Britain. Some historical elements featured the Headless Horseman, which was supposedly a Hessian. The Hessians were hired to aid the British in the war. The supernatural stories served as a reminder of the war and told by those who were traumatized. In Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane is a schoolteacher who takes an interest in the wealthiest man’s daughter, Katrina

In the late 1700's and early 1800's, literature began to show it was changing thanks to the newly formed democracy in America. As is the case with any young government, many different interest groups arose to attempt to mold the government according to their vision of democracy. Washington Irving, a native New Yorker born in 1783, grew up in a world engulfed in these democratic ideals. He grew up to be, as many would grow up in this atmosphere, a political satirist. This satirical nature of Irving's shows up well in "Rip Van Winkle", as he uses historical allusions and symbolic characters to mockingly compare colonial life under British rule to the democracy of the young United States.

- The origins of fiction and American identity: a comparison of Irving and Cooper -