Irving Textual Analysis of "The Legend Of Sllepy Hollow" Essay

Quote 1: "Here, in a word, - and it is a rare instance in my life, - I had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held." Introductory, pg. 24

Throughout Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, it seems as if Atticus Finch is a failure as both a parent and a lawyer. However, somebody with a good understanding of the novel will realise that Atticus is in fact a terrific lawyer and a superb father. However, like all people, Atticus has his flaws.

“The only sounds I could hear above the trotting of the pony’s hooves and the rumble of the wheels and the creek of the cart were sudden harsh weird cries from birds near and far.”

In the first couple paragraphs it shows how much Irving wants us to get the creepy and scared feeling. “Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the world” (1). This is saying that even around the village it is quiet and still. There is emptiness surrounding the village, lurking and waiting for somebody to pass by.

(Page 1) “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” has different tones throughout the story. At the beginning the tone is somnolent yet peaceful, then the tone gets spooky slightly sarcastic, humorous, mocking and surreal.

“Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.” In this small excerpt from his short story “The Open Boat” one can clearly see that Stephen Crane was a firm believer in the concepts of naturalism. After the harsh and violent Civil War the United States was no longer the nation it had been before. Previously, Americans had focused on the positive or romantic side of their surroundings and had written in a romantic style, glorifying man’s communion with nature. However, after the civil war that wasn’t the case. Some American’s had now experienced the harsh reality that nature was completely unbothered by the events that occurred to man. They realized

Washington Irving illustrates the characteristics of American Romanticism through his representation of nature. A characteristic of an American Romantic story is how it “contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual

Jem and Scout, throughout “To Kill A Mockingbird,” learn to consider things from other people’s perspectives. Atticus, Jem and Scout’s father, says “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in” (Lee 39). They learn this through experiences with their neighbor Boo Radley as they mature beyond their years. At the beginning of the novel, Jem and Scout make fun of Boo and assume that all of the rumors going around about him are true. However, later on in the story the children grow an admiration for Boo and learn to understand him. As they matured, Jem and Scout naturally learned many life lessons of appreciation, respect, and courage

4) “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (O’Brien 124).

~” Even the tradesmen to whom the Duvitches gave good money were either curt with them or downright rude.”(page 5)

The story describes him in the following sentence.  "He seemed all head with a tiny body which was red and shriveled like an old man's."

"He was the kind of man - powerful of body, even - tempered, and not

Imagine a place where the verdict of a rape trial stems from racial prejudice rather than the proper evaluation of proven evidence. This is Maycomb, Alabama, the strange, Southern town where Scout and Jem Finch grow up during the 1930s in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. In short, the novel travels a thin line between a light-hearted narrative of the siblings’ childhood with their single father, a defense attorney named Atticus Finch, and the injustices that arise within their close-knit community. The complexities include extreme racism, a peculiar social hierarchy, and general misunderstandings of certain people within the small town. These are all seen as “Maycomb ways”, almost as if they are considered facts. Through her writing, Lee conveys an important message that an essential part of a child’s education often takes place in a home or community rather than a classroom by utilizing the characters, Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape whom Atticus is defending.

"Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards" (pg. 159).

He was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend. (14)