Washington Irving Essays

Washington Irving uses humor throughout his short story, “Rip Van Winkle.” His humor is of a primarily satirical nature. This story is about a man who is fooled by a stranger and falls asleep for twenty years. The man awakens to a world that is completely different. Irving’s satire exists within the details of the ensuing plot; his wit is clever and subtle throughout. Overall, one can examine and analyze the many scenes of “Rip Van Winkle” that consist of Irving’s intriguing sense of humor. Irving

However, a masculine story usually is about a hero who saves the day. Washington irving combines the two types of stories. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, the main character, Ichabod Crane, is given feminine characteristics to create mock-heroic irony and compare male and female storytelling. Ichabod’s actions and characteristics are feminine. He is tells ghost stories, has no courage, and is easily tricked. These traits are how Irving creates mock-heroic irony in Ichabod. Ichabod Crane is a feminine

Washington Irving, author of the short story “Rip Van Winkle,” writes, “In a word, Rip [Van Winkle] was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible” (10). Rip Van Winkle is the protagonist in this short story, narrated by Diedrich Knickerbocker, which first appeared in 1819 in Irving’s collection of stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (2). Irving sets the story in a small Dutch colonial village

Rip Van Winkle is a confusing national identity story written in the 1819(IRVING 467). It’s a time in history when America was developing and changing as a nation. The twist of the story makes the dialogue kind of confusing but it all makes sense at the end. It’s very interesting how the story takes place. In the beginning of the story Washington Irving describes the nature in a quote by stating, “Whoever has a voyage up the Hudson, must remember the Catskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch

such as books, movies, and tv shows are associated with the genre of horror and superstition. One famous American short story writer known as Washington Irving wrote a famous short story and in this story, he uses the supernatural to dictate the plot of the story. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was a speculative fiction story written by Washington Irving. It takes place in the Post-Revolutionary War America. America at this time was

greed for money has all been driven by a single individual’s wants. Washington Irving understood that this world is a fallen nation, apart from God’s righteousness. Like many great authors, Irving understood the fallen nature of people and how only the light of Christ could heal the broken hearted. In the analysis of “The Devil and Tom Walker” one can see that Irving makes biblical allusions to parables of greed spoken by Jesus. Irving was born in a puritan era, where the individuals living in that

Washington Irving is a well-known author famous for his stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” During the time Irving was writing “Rip Van Winkle,” Americans were fascinated with the Romanticism Era. The era was known for literature that emphasized emotions and they lived to read about past events. No one had ever tried to link America’s history to fictional literature. Irving successively wrote a short story based on the German folktale “Peter Klaus the Goatherd.” Although Irving’s

Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle Shapes American Culture "Darkness...lowers upon my mind, and the times are so hard they sicken my soul," says Washington Irving in a letter to a friend (Letters 446). This statement reveals Irving's intense emotional condition, and in many ways indicates the intense social atmosphere as well as his personal conflicts, during the composition of The Sketch Book. Upon the bankruptcy of his family's fortune, of which he depended on solely for his monetary

In Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving and Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the wilderness is used as a place for the main characters of both stories to have profound supernatural, spiritual experiences. Washington Irving uses the wilderness and nature to add a great sense of romanticism to his writing by creating a peaceful, mystical world. In Rip Van Winkle, Iriving implies that nature’s possessive beauty offers a great escape from the conventions of everyday life and can allow one to

Washington Irving's ‘The legend of sleepy hollow’ The overall idea of the story is just to scare people who read it, there is no real world use of the story it's just for fun and to scare the wits out of the people who read it. But the main question is; How does Myth, Fantasy, and Gender play into the overall theme of sleepy hollow? Myth plays a great deal into the overall themes of sleepy hollow by creating a dark fabel steeped in historical significance. First question, How does Gender Play a