Catskill Mountains

Rip’s demeanor to please seems to result from Irving’s own personality. This fictional character escaped to the mountains from Dame Van Winkle’s wrath, but returned to a new world of foolishness after the Revolutionary War like his escape to Europe from the disappointment of his brother and the changes of the world. His humor always presented itself as Rip Van Winkle…

Journalist Linda Ellerbee, once stated, "People are pretty much alike. It 's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities." People do not realize how similar they are until they determine what they have in common. We can see that people accept our differences because our differences make us who we are. Linda Ellerbee 's statement reminded me of the main characters in the stories "The Devil and Tom Walker" and "Rip Van Winkle". Tom and Rip are two…

he didn 't recognize. People stared as he walked past them. Rip noticed that the population grew in size and the town was bustling. Their style changed since the twenty years Rip was there. When he returned to his farm house after coming down the mountain he saw it in decay. The house was abandoned by his family and all that was left was the wood frame and his dog. All that he remembered about his house was…

The year was 1997. Rip Van Winkle is lying in bed and dreading going to work. Rip was pay phone technician with Bellsouth. He was rather lazy so this job suited him perfectly. All he had to do was drive around and repair pay phones and collect the money. Rip had been married for fifteen years. During these fifteen years, he had been bossed around daily by his wife. Today wasn’t any different. His wife, Dame Van Winkle, stormed into the bedroom and demanded that he get up. Rip replied to her in…

I believe Washington Irving’s purpose for writing “Rip Van Winkle” was to express the simple concept of uncontrollable change. To express change Irving used a clever fairy tale, drenched in historical truths. Reading Rip was entertaining, but unlocking the depth was not simple. My conclusion is this: on the individual level change is inevitable, the world is a moving place, but we have a choice, we can either change with it or stay the same, and even with that it is still up to the community to…

the revolutionary war. The story is based on a man named Rip Van Winkle. Rip Van Winkle lives in a small village at the bottom of some mountains called the Kaatskills Mountains. Those mountains were once a part of the Appalachian’s. He lives with his wife Dame Van Winkle, two kids and a dog named Wolf. He lives west of the Hudson River, where he can see the mountains…

Bowden, Mary Weatherspoon. Washington Irving. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Bowden underlines the integrity of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in which “Rip Van Winkle” first performed, and proposes that Irving’s most highest literary accomplishment was his style. Though the book was not known, it include two of the most famous American short stories, one being “Rip Van Winkle” Mary Bowden received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. She taught in…

Washington Irving’s story “Rip Van Winkle” uses common literary characteristics to bring to life a new version of a mythology for America. Some of the characteristics he uses are a time setting of the past; a positive message about the people it is written for and about; and magical, mysterious, and incredible events. All of these characteristics help convey a mood and theme that allows the reader to envision how the US changed dramatically over a short period of time. At the very beginning of…

A few months ago, my cousin Mark invited me to help on his farm. I accepted his invitation, knowing he would pay me handsomely. However, when I set foot on the farm, one thought came to mind: what a dump! Mark 's farm was so pitiful one could mistake it for a junkyard. One thing that stuck out to me was his cattle. The poor creatures did not have anything to eat. All of Mark 's grass was dead, and I could count every cow 's ribs from a football field away. As I roamed around Mark 's farm, it…

The main focus of all my research on Washington Irving, a Yankee living in New York, was to learn how the first American author pictured the world. Irving is widely considered the first American author not because he was the first author in North America, but because he is the first person in America to write stories “by heart”. What I mean by writing with heart was that Irving wrote with a passion, as he considered his work written for the reason of what he loved the most, humor. Irving wrote…