Romantic Hero Longfellow

Rip Van Winkle, a story written by Washington Irving in the early 1800s, demonstrates the emergence and development of American Mythology. Packed full of mythological elements, Irving’s tale depicts a man who encounters mysterious and fantastical characters in equally intriguing settings. Rip Van Winkle displays three major factors that contribute to mythology: mysterious, historical setting, remarkable and strange characters, and heroic, magical events and their consequences.

Ferguson’s argument about Rip being the “symbol of American infancy and misplaced innocence,” (530) is an argument I disagree with. I disagree with it because Rip is not a child at any time in Irving’s story, he is just a person who does not like to work, and would rather help other people out. Ferguson says, “Rip, …, embodies an escapist mentality,” (530) that can

Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle was seen by the townspeople as “a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband” (1). Van Winkle’s kindness is seen by everyone, even animals as Washington states, “and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood” (1). The love from animals

The Irony of Rip Van Winkle In Washington Irving’s, “Rip Van Winkle”, he uses a unique sense of sarcasm and wittiness to lighten the mood of literature, something uncommon in his era. Writers in his time we’re all extremely profound and somber in their works and writing styles. Irving, however, chose to write fictional short stories as a way to channel his comical side. For example Dame Van Winkle, Rips Wife, is noted to be the main cause of Rips failures, often nagging and goading him.

Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle in 1819 around the time of the American Revolution. British ruled the colonies and they were so determined to break free. The period prior to the revolution and after was evident with change. The society altered in extreme shared, political and analytical aspects. Freedom to do as they wanted was their main objective. One could easily compare this time period to the story of Rip Van Winkle. This is a story about change and transformation. The story revolves around a family man known as Rip and his demanding wife Dame. Rip had no desire to do any constructive work because he was a pretty happy mortal that didn’t take very much serious, and would rather starve than work for a penny. (Irving 32) Instead, he preferred to have fun with the children and socialize with the neighbors helping them with their

Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer, and historian. He is best known for his famous short stories that include “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” (listverse, 2015).

Despite Irving's criticisms, he was a patriot and admirer of both the Revolution and his country, but he had serious questions about their democratic excesses. He was interested in the Revolution throughout his life and had collected many books on the subject. On its primary level, "Rip Van Winkle" is a public celebration of the American Revolution. The story opens with the prefigurative imagery of family breakups, specifically the Kaatskill (Catskill) Mountains that "are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family" (p. 769). In the story, Rip's colonial family is also dismembered as he escapes from his tyrannical wife, but he is finally rediscovered and reintegrated into his new American family at the end. The context of family

The mythical elements of the narrative are most obvious when Gothic elements begin to creep in. As Rip hears his name echoing in the woods, but can “see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain,” Irving tugs gently on the thread of the Salem trials, suggesting that the supernatural is afoot in the woods. The crow sighting is not incidental here, either, as Crow or Raven would signal the onset of a trickster narrative in oral literature. Irving nudges readers toward the mythical reading, in part, by endearing them to Rip, who could hardly be accused of witchcraft. The choice, in other words, that Irving forces readers to confront is whether to make fools of themselves by trying to explain the entire episode as factual history (thus perpetuating the Salem nonsense) or sink into the metaphorical complexities of the story. And, like a good myth, the story doesn’t really leave much choice in the end, but casts its own spell that carries the reader where it will.

In the telling of Rip's previous life, Irving does not hide Rip's laziness and unproductive nature, but the reader is constantly reminded of Rip's kind and gentle qualities. Never do we view his actions negatively, for his poor work habits are overshadowed by his character strength and other amusing qualities.

Rip is known in this story as a lazy person around his house, but well-liked among the village. “The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor…for he will sit on a wet rock…and fish all day without a murmur” (63). This caused Rip’s wife to always nag Rip, but being liked by his neighbors made him a more relatable character so that the reader can empathize with how he feels. As a result, Rip preferred the company of the woods over his nagging wife. However, the most mysterious character in this myth is the stranger that he meets in the woods. “On nearer approach, he was still more surprise at the singularity of the stranger appearance …He was a short square built old fellow, with bushy hair and a grisly beard. His dress was of the Dutch fashion” (68). Irving includes the stranger to honor the founders of the area and continue to mystical mood to the story. Legend suggests that the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew that founded the nearby Hudson River, haunted the Katskill Mountains. When Rip meets these remarkable characters, they give him a drink that causes more mysterious events to

Washington Irving’s story focuses on a generally good-natured and spirited, albeit negligent, man by the name of Rip Van Winkle. Van Winkle is characterized as being “a kind neighbor, and an obedient, henpecked husband” who also possesses an unfortunate “aversion to all kinds of profitable labour” (Baym 472). Rip’s wife, Dame Van Winkle, however, is made out to be the exact opposite of her good-for-nothing husband. Dame Van Winkle rears the children and tends to all the housework, all the while incessantly nagging on her husband and bemoaning the ways in which he is dragging their family down. Rip, desperately seeking a reprieve from the tongue-wagging of Dame Van Winkle, strolls off into the nearby woods with his gun in his hand and his dog at his side. This is where the elaborate allegory utilized by Irving truly begins.

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”.

For the latter part of the last two centuries, generations of people around the world have read or heard of the tale of the man who slept for two decades known as “Rip Van Winkle”. This short story was originally published in a book called “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” by American author Washington Irving under the pseudonym “Geoffrey Crayon. Irving used effective writing to show the reader every detail needed to understand where and what is going on especially during the transitioning periods of before the American Revolution to the aftermath. Some generalize this story as a simple story of a man who slept for two decades, however what if the theme of this story is truly about the stages of depression suffered by the main character. This could be insinuated by Washington Irving in certain aspects of the character and the story itself of “Rip Van Winkle”.

… the hero is the typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been established.

Another example as to why I felt justified in placing my sympathy with Dame was when Irving addressed that fact that Rip had an “insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor.” The author thoughtfully chose connotations of words that would easily manipulate the sentence to be seen in a more positive light. This, in my eyes, is simply a fancy way of saying he is lazy. Yet again, another way Rip sneakily maneuvered his way out of his rightful duties. What the story refused to address is that fact that everything Rip ran away from and ignored, Dame had to make up for. Everyday, when he ran off to the local pub, Dame stayed home, took care of the house, prepared the meals, tended to the children, and most likely had very little time for herself. Again, this is very similar to the structure of my home as a child. Before the divorce, my dad basically lived at the bars. Mom spent eight hours of her day teaching kindergarten, only to come home to a full grown, drunken kindergartener that she unfortunately was married to, who had ignored two children under the age of four for a good portion of the day. To build on this, Rip and my father were both good at producing constant, unreasonable excuses as to why specific things