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). Revolution is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, work, etc,” indicating that a drastic change in lifestyle. While possible, Rip realizes through exploring his hometown that nothing has significantly
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In this particular escapade to the woods, Rip discovers a strange man high up in the Catskill mountains, and assists in the man’s load in climbing the mountain. When Rip and the man reach their destination, a scene of merriment, all sorts of figures bowling and drinking. He has a copious amount of some liquid to drink, and then finds himself awake where he had first seen the strange man. When he travels back up the mountain to retrieve his gun, there is no evidence of the gathering in the amphitheater, and the entrance is sealed. He travels back to his town and discovers that he has traveled twenty years into the future, and Britain is no longer in control of the colonies. Rip finds his house in decay, and the inn that he frequented before the trip had been transformed. He ends up moving in with his daughter, and is no longer burdened by having to work or deal with his …show more content…
Furthermore, “Rip, in fact, was no politician; [and] the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him,” meaning that an objective viewer who was not present for the nationalist propaganda and mindset through the war does not see a difference between pre and post-war America (Irving 61). In America after the war, there was a “remarkable effort to promote and publicize ‘good feelings’, an effort that denied the continuing conflicts most Americans faced” says Waldstreicher, frustrated that the change that America had hoped for had not been achieved, and that their discontent was suppressed (Waldstreicher 295). It is taught in schools the greatness of revolutionary America, and how change was brought upon by heroes such as George Washington and Paul Revere, while ignoring the fact that millions of Americans were upset that they still did not achieve the change they desired. In the story, “the sublime scenes of patriotism, still simultaneously imagined and embodied, could seem less beautiful than terrifying,” as the America Rip now lives in is unknown to him, but he cannot place the actual change that has taken place (Waldstreicher 295). It is almost as if he is in a state of limbo, in between the past which he knew and the
In this particular escapade to the woods, Rip discovers a strange man high up in the Catskill mountains, and assists in the man’s load in climbing the mountain. When Rip and the man reach their destination, a scene of merriment, all sorts of figures bowling and drinking. He has a copious amount of some liquid to drink, and then finds himself awake where he had first seen the strange man. When he travels back up the mountain to retrieve his gun, there is no evidence of the gathering in the amphitheater, and the entrance is sealed. He travels back to his town and discovers that he has traveled twenty years into the future, and Britain is no longer in control of the colonies. Rip finds his house in decay, and the inn that he frequented before the trip had been transformed. He ends up moving in with his daughter, and is no longer burdened by having to work or deal with his …show more content…
Furthermore, “Rip, in fact, was no politician; [and] the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him,” meaning that an objective viewer who was not present for the nationalist propaganda and mindset through the war does not see a difference between pre and post-war America (Irving 61). In America after the war, there was a “remarkable effort to promote and publicize ‘good feelings’, an effort that denied the continuing conflicts most Americans faced” says Waldstreicher, frustrated that the change that America had hoped for had not been achieved, and that their discontent was suppressed (Waldstreicher 295). It is taught in schools the greatness of revolutionary America, and how change was brought upon by heroes such as George Washington and Paul Revere, while ignoring the fact that millions of Americans were upset that they still did not achieve the change they desired. In the story, “the sublime scenes of patriotism, still simultaneously imagined and embodied, could seem less beautiful than terrifying,” as the America Rip now lives in is unknown to him, but he cannot place the actual change that has taken place (Waldstreicher 295). It is almost as if he is in a state of limbo, in between the past which he knew and the