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Analysis Pages

Themes in Rip Van Winkle

National Identity: Washington Irving was deeply invested in questions of American identity. He was built-in the week his family unit learned of the ceasefire that ended the Revolutionary State of war, and was himself named for George Washington. Despite spending a large portion of his developed life in Europe, Irving remained dedicated to the cause of the U.s.a.. He was the kickoff internationally read and respected American author and the start author to write explicitly about America in a fictional context. As such, it is natural that questions regarding the nature of national and personal identity should permeate his stories. The ease with which Rip slips out of time during such a cardinal moment in American history, and the relative ease with which he is able to rejoin the life of his village, speaks to the potential for disassociation between personal and national identities.

Historical Veracity: By using a frame narrative and involving multiple narrators in Rip's story, Irving requires his readers to ask questions about truth and the role of the recorder in composing a region'due south history.

Themes Examples in Rip Van Winkle:

Rip Van Winkle

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"Nicholas Vedder? why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years!..." Encounter in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Upon his introduction, Nicholas Vedder was described at length, using language that tied him closely to the preceding image of the Catskill mountains. When Rip returns to the village, withal, the surrounding mountains are unchanged—"every hill and dale precisely as it had always been"—and Vedder has vanished completely, reinforcing themes of human insignificance and transience as compared to the natural world.

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"He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or some other man...." Meet in text(Rip Van Winkle)

This latter one-half of "Rip Van Winkle" combines the inn'southward conflation of George Iii and George Washington with Rip's own momentary loss of self to bear witness how hard it tin be to place oneself in a political and social context. In this moment, Rip stands in for the rural American everyman, unsure of his identify in a new landscape that demands agile engagement from its inhabitants.

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"the first discoverer of the river and land, kept a kind of vigil at that place..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Mythological traditions of sleeping kings hidden in mountains are prevalent throughout Europe. These traditions frequently include promises of the kings' eventual return to their countries. The The states is no longer under the sway of a monarchy, but Hudson is fulfilling the role of an circumspect ruler, watching with "a guardian eye" over the land he mapped for settlement. By incorporating this European tradition into "Rip Van Winkle," Irving is elevating the mythology of the United States the the same level as that of more firmly established countries. He is likewise implying for the US a longevity that volition exist comparable to that of European empires.

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"swelling up to a noble peak, and lording information technology over..." Run across in text(Rip Van Winkle)

By giving life to this area of nature that surrounds the relatively peaceful town the author gives the mountains a mystical aureola. Doing this sets a magical tone early on in the story, before the reader enters the forest. Irving will continue to personify the natural environment—the mountains, the river—as "lordly" throughout "Rip Van Winkle." A common theme in Romantic literature is the relative smallness of the individual contrasting with the unknowable vastness of nature, with the latter held to be inherently superior.

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"precise counterpart of himself..." Meet in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Despite the revolution and the political investment that the inhabitants exhibit, Rip'south son is only as lethargic and poor as his father was. This maybe symbolizes that while times have changed, at the core, things have remained the aforementioned.

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"Rip'south daughter took him abode to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished firm, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. Equally to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to nourish to any matter else merely his concern...." Run into in text(Rip Van Winkle)

These familial dynamics should feel familiar to Rip, as they duplicate the gender roles displayed in his own marriage. Rip's daughter keeps a neat abode, and his son is uninterested in profitable work. Unlike her mother, though, Judith appears to accept settled downwards with a hubby well-suited to structured commercial piece of work. Perhaps the village is no longer as widely supportive of Rip's preferred lifestyle, or perhaps Dame Van Winkle's demands were not equally unreasonable equally they seemed.

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"The cherry coat was changed for 1 of blueish and buff, a sword was held in the mitt instead of a sceptre, the caput was busy with a cocked chapeau, and underneath was painted in large characters, "GENERAL WASHINGTON."..." Encounter in text(Rip Van Winkle)

The appearance of the boondocks, the behavior of its inhabitants, and indeed, the government of the country, take inverse significantly while Rip has been gone. Yet the confront of King George III's looking out from the clothes of George Washington shows that at the core, some things are much as Rip left them. Rip's blurring together of George Washington and George III is indicative of his "missing time" on a personal level, equally he looks for links to the familiar past. It is also symbolic of the distance governments often have from the everyday lives of people, rendering authority figures somewhat interchangeable to Rip and his village.

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"there was every hill and dale precisely equally it had always been..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Nosotros know from Rip'southward reexamination of the wooded glen that this statement is not strictly true: there is a stream flowing where there wasn't one before. The overall appearance of the country surrounding his hamlet hasn't changed, though, contributing to the theme of nature'due south independence from human governance.

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"a strange effigy slowly toiling upwardly the rocks..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

This passage shares features with Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker," also published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. In both, the titular protagonists meet strange men in the wilderness. Tom Walker finds himself in a "lonely, melancholic place" when he meets his stranger, and Rip's approaches from out of a "wild, lone, and shagged" glen. European settlers in America would have been suspicious of the unexplored country around them, and Irving is linking this to the Romantic idea of the natural globe as a foreign and forceful place.

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"the muttering of i of those transient thunder-showers..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Whereas Irving has described the sound Rip hears every bit "long rolling peals," Rip himself revises the noise to a much gentler "muttering." The specificity of these words and the huge departure in volume between the sounds they describe show that Rip is either not experiencing his surroundings accurately, or that he is unwilling to confront what he is experiencing.

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"what excuse shall I brand to Dame Van Winkle?..." Run across in text(Rip Van Winkle)

It is notable that Rip's offset thought upon awakening is an expression of fear of his wife. This can be understood to exist a fearfulness of leaving the freedom of the woods for the demands of village commercialism. Rip has essentially woken up subsequently a not bad party and is dreading his return to work.

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"He was observed, at starting time, to vary on some points every time he told it..." Run across in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Rip himself is added as some other dubious layer through which his story percolates to the reader. As Knickerbocker explains away the variances in Rip's story, and then has Crayon explained away the poor veracity of Knickerbocker'due south. The result is a narrative that is completely untrustworthy, presented with every balls of its truthfulness and value.

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"the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him..." Run across in text(Rip Van Winkle)

This explicit comparison between Rip and the American colonies does not necessarily show the latter in a favorable light. Irving was deeply invested in the crusade of the Us, but he held no illusions well-nigh its questionable impact on the everyman. National identity is depicted in this story equally a option made on the private level rather than the civic 1: Rip may technically now be "a free citizen of the United States," but it is doubtful whether he ever participates in the structures that uphold that status.

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"There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, only that'due south rotten and gone as well...." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

A wooden tombstone decomposes over time, removing the information about the deceased. The fact that it lasted less than 18 years shows just how uninterested the hamlet of Rip'due south time was in leaving a permanent legacy. However, Dame Van Winkle seems to have been a forerunning influence, and the village is moving slowly toward a more participatory role in the globe.

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"a fact, handed downwards from his antecedent, the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings..." Run into in text(Rip Van Winkle)

Despite borrowing heavily from German stories, Irving wants the stories he creates for the United states to stand on their ain. To do so, he describes a rich folkloric tradition to which his stories contribute. That a party of ghosts can be treated equally a "fact" from a "historian" references the dubious scholastic qualifications of Knickerbocker and past extension the doubtful veracity of all such stories.

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"what courage can withstand the evil-doing and all-besetting terrors of a woman'due south natural language?..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

It is difficult to resolve Irving's feelings about women in "Rip Van Winkle." Diedrich Knickerbocker respected them equally a rich source of historical information, but he is an unreliable source. The wives of the hamlet are positively disposed toward Rip, except for his own, and she is either a shrewish caricature or has been misrepresented in her silence. This inconsistency of opinion lends weight to the estimation of Dame Van Winkle as a symbol of a larger tyranny, peradventure that of England or of civilized social club, more every bit a well-rounded graphic symbol in her own correct.

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"there was something strange and incomprehensible near the unknown, that inspired awe, and checked familiarity..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

While modern readers might discover information technology strange, and fifty-fifty silly, that Rip doesn't question his circumstances, the theme of human helplessness when confronted past an unknown strength was common for Romantic writers in the 18th and 19th centuries. This contributed to the evolution of gothic literature, in which characters oftentimes find themselves in thrall to strange and indescribable powers. For Irving's readers, a character who is unwilling or unable to question a strange experience would not exist unusual or jarring.

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"The sometime gentleman died before long after the publication of his work..." See in text(Rip Van Winkle)

The introduction to this short story uses a "framing device"; that is, the narrator tells u.s. that he's recounting a story that was told to him. This accomplishes several things: information technology draws attention to the fictional narrator, which encourages us to question the truth of the story, and it gives "Rip Van Winkle" an chemical element of historical truth mixed with legend. Since we are encouraged to question the truth from the start, all themes and statements nowadays in the text must be considered both at face value and satirically.

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