Leslie Winkle

“Rip Van Winkle” was an iconic short story that was written by Washington Irving, in June, 1818. It was so well-known that almost every child in the United States has read it or heard about it once in their lifetime. Irving creates a simple-minded and easygoing character named Rip Van Winkle. He was cherished by the community, but his wife henpecks him day and night because of his carefree attitude. However, Irving’s illustration of Rip does not encompass the true reality of the “American Dream”…

While verse was economically marginal in the early nineteenth century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) became the first American poet who could live off his royalties (Gioia 74). He was also the first poet of the New World to achieve an international fame; his reputation reached Europe and even Latin America (64). Devoted to the creation of a native literature, Longfellow committed himself to developing an American poetic diction. In “Our Native Writers” (1825), his graduation address,…

Washington Irving’s mythical story “Rip Van Winkle” tells of a man who wakes up in a seemly all new…

right at home? Washington Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle manages to merge several traits of a mythological story. The traits we will focus on include, setting the story in the past, filled with exaggerated characters, and features magical events with their consequences. How do these traits affect the story? And how do readers feel because of these traits? Now, Irving uses the setting to add a mythological characteristic to “Rip Van Winkle”. The years after the American Revolution…

A critique on post-revolutionary America, Rip Van Winkle wakes up twenty years in the future and discovers exactly what he once knew, his house, town, and faces aged. However, America has usurped the British troops and overthrown the government, which Rip discovers as he explores his town after his journey through time. Scholars claim that the intent in subtly criticize the new American power, and demonstrate through Rip that pre-revolution America was not what history suggests (Pearce 1).…

¬¬ Leslie Marmon Silko’s book, Ceremony, expresses many issues faced by Native Americans, specifically the Laguna Pueblo people living in New Mexico during the 1940's. The central character, Tayo, a man with mixed ethnic heritage, survived being a soldier during World War II and suffered from post-traumatic syndrome. After Tayo falsely believes he observes his uncle’s death, the military releases him to his family's home on the Laguna reservation. He still suffers mentally, not getting cured…

in the past, filled with bizarre and exaggerated characters, contains impressive, odd, heroic, events and their outcomes, and lastly, they acquire a positive message about the country and its people. An example of a mythology would be “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving. This American mythology is about a…

consequences, such as being belittled, despised and the most horrible one of them, being shunned by the community one is part of. In this essay, my purpose is to show how damaging traditional gender roles can be, focusing on how Rip Van Winkle and Dame Van Winkle differ from the norm and how they are perceived by their community, as a consequence. In order to reach my goal, I am going to make use of the theories developed by Simone…

Leslie Marmon Silko states her view on the significance of oral tradition in the Pueblo community. Silko begins her written speech by saying, “The words most highly valued are those spoken from the heart, unpremeditated and unrehearsed,” (467). Storytelling lies at the heart of Pueblo culture, for it brings their heritage together no matter the time or distance (Silko 470, 479). Pueblo oral tradition differentiates from English writing; oral tradition challenges academic writing. Silko’s written…

Leslie Marmon Silko has an enormous garden. It was started at her home in the Laguna Pueblo reservation, and took root in the desert there. While, like all the other Laguna families there, her home did have a vegetable garden and some flowers to add splashes of lively color, when Silko would come to grow her own garden, it would be planted with words instead of seeds. Nourished by sun-warmed sand and supported by the spirits of her ancestors, Silko’s words would grow, never to be cropped short…