Rip Van Winkle Wonders Off With His Dog

“Rip Van Winkle” is a classic American Mythological story that tells the tale of a man who sleeps for twenty years after drinking a mysterious drink. Rip Van Winkle is a very lazy, American man who one day, ventures off into the woods with his dog named Wolf. While in the woods, he finds a group of men playing Skittles and drinking liquor in the middle of an amphitheater. He joins them, and drinks some of their alcohol, but he soon passes out. When he awakens, twenty years have passed, and he missed the Revolutionary War, his children growing up, and even his wife passing away. What characteristics make this folklore such a classic fable in American literature? The story is set in the past, features exaggerated and strange characters, and

This tree resides in Oregon’s Willamette Mission State Park, where in 1834 the first white settler arrived to teach Native Americans. With the Black Cottonwood nearby, the missionary expanded until the 1861 great flood devastated their farm. Unfazed, this robust Black Cottonwood simply kept growing. Today, it’s nearly 300 years old. This tree now revels in the peace and quiet of its bordering 1,600 acres of woodland.

The novel Speak by Laurie Hales Anderson shows Melinda Sordino struggling through the year, and her recovery from the painful memory of getting raped at the party in summer break. In the beginning of the story, the story shows how bad Melinda feels and then she changes and starts growing and at the final stage of the story Melinda becomes a strong hard oaktree-like person. In the book Speak, the author symbolizes the tree to show Melinda’s change from being an outcast to being an accepted person; this also supports the theme: time can help heal one’s painful memories.In the beginning of the year, her trees looked like trees that existed nowhere on earth, but by the end of the year, her trees were breathing and looked as if they had shot up

Nature has always provided a sanctuary for me, especially during the Spring and the Summer. The beautiful trees, flowers, and long grasses in the local nature preserve have always provided me with great joy and freedom in my leisure time. More importantly, I have always enjoyed doing nature hikes with my friends. In the Spring of 2013, I decided I wanted to hike with a group of people, instead of hiking by myself. I chose Allison, James, and Sheila to be my companions for a day-hike into the depths of the woodlands. During the hike, Allison told me about a really large oak tree that she had seen deep in the middle of the forest. She had actually given the tree a name: “Big Albert”. Allison had told us that she had named the tree after her big brother. Tragically, Albert had died in a car accident in 2010, so all of us were inspired to join Allison in this spiritual quest. All of us were very surprised to hear of this tree, since old oaks were very rare in these parts. We decided that it would be our mission to find

One night three kids named Outlaw, Upchurch, and Fat Boy were walking down Clinton Road. Earlier they had stopped by McDonalds to get Fat Boy a grand mac, Upchurch and Outlaw got some roller food from Wa-Wa. They fell asleep in the car and the next thing they knew they were parked in front of this mysterious, creaky, old, haunted looking house. They still had their fishing bows and really bright flashlights, so they set off to explore.

The tree itself is ancient; you have been told that most Fruit trees live, at most, fifty years, but this one has grown wide around the trunk and long in the branches. Despite its age, it still makes fruit. The tree makes almost every fruit in the world. Some say that this is the fruit tree after which the monastery was named, a true immortal tree. Other believe it to be a descendant of the original Fruit True. The Fruit Tree’s branches extend over a lake around the tree and reflects on it. It is normally a very peaceful spot, but now the atmosphere it thick. Abraham stands there with Master Shen, the oldest teacher in the

Getting a tree means going in search of a large tree with lots of foliage. Small and thin-branched trees are unwanted. Once the family picks their plump tree, they undertake a challenging task of bringing the huge, heavy tree back to their home. They have to pick it up and tie it to the top of their car, and to top it off they have to drive very slow so the tree doesn’t fall off. Once they arrive home they have to bring it down from the car and take it inside. It doesn’t fit easily through the entrance of the house; so many people have to help push the tree through the doorway. Once the tree is finally inside, for some weird reason the tree always needs to be put in the center of the living room, and it doesn’t stop there. Once the tree is placed in the center, then family members decorate it with flashy and colorful gems on strings. They also add wires around the tree, and after plugging it to the wall; it makes the tree look very luminous. After decorating the tree with gems on strings and bright wires, there needs to be a final touch. A star, or an angel is put on the tip of the tree. Maybe it brings some sort of wisdom or good vibes, which compliments the tree. As time passes, people put decorated boxes around the tree in the days leading up to

and elderly. That day, he was in a rush to help this little old woman who had a tree branch that had

In the year of 1942 on a sunny day there was a family that was hiking in Deadwood, SD. They were hiking by these tall pine trees. They were different colors….some of them were a very dark red, several trees were dark and light green, many trees were kind of like a weird yellow greenish color.

Mark Haddon’s A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a mystery/bildungsroman novel, and Sophie Laguna’s The Eye of the Sheep, a family drama/bildungsroman novel, explore the way certain factors can affect an individual’s growth within a familial environment through similar themes exhibited in both novels. Haddon and Laguna show their main characters Christopher and Jimmy growing up within a dysfunctional family in 20th century Swindon and Melbourne, where each main character in their respective novel suffer from a mild case of autism, Christopher in particular, Asperger’s Syndrome. An individual’s perception of reality directly impacts the development of their growth and sense of self, and their understanding within familial relationships.

Rip Van Winkle was a man of good nature. He often would help the neighborhood women fix things around their homes. He took the world easy and laid back without thinking of consequences. But he also had a short temper especially when it came to his wife. His wife didn’t like how he would help the neighborhood women instead of working of his family farm. He would often lose his temper and become so upset with his wife and go on walks with his dog to cool off. One day on his walk into the woods Rip Van Winkle took a sip of a drink and slept for twenty years. Within those years, things changed around him. He changed physically, politically and psychologically along with the town, the towns people and his family. Through the changes of his albescence

In comparison to Rip Van Winkle, who is a very well-liked man in his community (3), but faces the usual marriage conflict of his wife constantly nagging and him looking for a way to escape (4). He travels first with his dog Wolf to the inn, where he goes to listen to Nicholas Vedder and his group discus the political distress they feel (4). Not soon after his wife would call and explicitly demand her husband go back home immediately. Instead Rip unconsciously dragged himself to the highest point of the Kaatskill mountains, where he perused his favorite sport of squirrel shooting (5). After a long nap, he sees a short, square built old fellow, who asked for his help in lifting the heavy keg towards the top of the mountain on a long and rocky road until they see a hollow, amphitheater. Once inside an odd-looking bunch of

Washington Irving – American Literature Pioneer American literature greatly flourished in the nineteenth century through remarkable works of American Romantic authors. Among these people was Washington Irving who achieved international fame for his fictional works as well as for his biographies and historical writings. Irving also advocated for writing as a legitimate career, and argued for stronger laws to protect writers from copyright infringement (Bio). Washington Irving exemplified the Romantic Era because he emphasized feelings, emotion, and imagination, and he valued individualism and uniqueness of each person. Washington Irving was a popular nineteenth century American author best known for the stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend

Nature: An Escape from Reality Throughout the story of “Rip Van Winkle” written by Washington Irving and the tale of “Young Goodman Brown” authored by Nathaniel Hawthorne, nature acts as a refuge for both of the main characters in the stories. In the story of “Rip Van Winkle,” Rip ventures into the woods to escape his nagging wife at home, using the setting of nature as a refuge from his life at home to escape his miserable home life. Rip’s wife nags so much that he uses the Kaatskill mountains as a refuge from her henpecking ways,“…his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going.”

Escaping his nagging wife, Rip, travels deep into the forest and pondered the views of “the lordly Hudson, far, far, below him, moving on its silent but majestic course” and “a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, unaware of the life changing events that were about to take place (Irving). He encountered a group of dwarves who had a keg of liquor of which he snuck many fateful drinks until falling into a deep sleep. When he woke up twenty years later having missed the revolutionary war, the deaths of many friends and family, the most prominent of which being his wife. Rip Van Winkle's 20 year disappearance into the wilderness illuminated where his true concerns lay, not in politics or even in the length of his life but the freedom from “the yoke of matrimony” (Irving). The romantic theme of nature and its mystical qualities gave Washington Irving's short story it's thought provoking