There are plenty of ways to pass time. If you’re taking the bus home after a long night at work and waiting for your stop to come, play a quick game on your phone or listen to music, maybe chat with someone sitting next to you. If you’re waiting in the long lines at Disneyland, take a minute to pay attention to accents and other languages that you might hear, or watch the faces of the people just getting off the ride. If you’re waiting for your nagging shrewish wife to finally stop pestering and tormenting you for days on end, take a hike up to your favorite spot on the nearby mountainside and take a nap for 20 years. Okay, maybe don’t do that. Washington Irving’s mythical story “Rip Van Winkle” tells of a man who wakes up in a seemly all new
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Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle demonstrates that even after great changes, good or bad, can you always come back from unimaginable situations. His warm, amicable personality and neighborly heart is what makes it easy for him to come to terms with his situation, and helps him to quickly make friends in a new village that he once knew so well.
Rip Van Winkle is a character that has many positive traits about him, and defining him by just one of them would be a gross understatement. Of all his great qualities, I would have to say that the one most conveyed to us throughout the story is his kind, neighborly heart. This quote from the story is a perfect example. “The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood” (7). Rip Van Winkle was …show more content…
Many may argue that Rip was in fact very lazy, because he would not tend to his farm work and family. But I believe otherwise. Rip was anything but lazy, as you can gather from this excerpt, “He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it” (19). At this point in the story, Rip had been tormented and badgered by his wife so much to the point that he only wished for rest and peace. When the strange figure appeared before him, seemingly struggling with his load, Rip Van Winkle hastily made his way down to meet the man and help him as soon as he could. This is the perfect example of how Rip is not a lazy character at all, but rather one that is willing to help anybody, and drop whatever he is doing in order to do that. A lazy man would have ignored the figure of the struggling person, and instead continued on sleeping and resting without a care in the world. But Rip does in fact do the exact opposite, which I believe to be something that says quite a lot about his character. Even more examples of how Rip Van Winkle was not a lazy man, and quite the opposite, can be found at around the end of our story. “Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the
Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle demonstrates that even after great changes, good or bad, can you always come back from unimaginable situations. His warm, amicable personality and neighborly heart is what makes it easy for him to come to terms with his situation, and helps him to quickly make friends in a new village that he once knew so well.
Rip Van Winkle is a character that has many positive traits about him, and defining him by just one of them would be a gross understatement. Of all his great qualities, I would have to say that the one most conveyed to us throughout the story is his kind, neighborly heart. This quote from the story is a perfect example. “The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood” (7). Rip Van Winkle was …show more content…
Many may argue that Rip was in fact very lazy, because he would not tend to his farm work and family. But I believe otherwise. Rip was anything but lazy, as you can gather from this excerpt, “He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it” (19). At this point in the story, Rip had been tormented and badgered by his wife so much to the point that he only wished for rest and peace. When the strange figure appeared before him, seemingly struggling with his load, Rip Van Winkle hastily made his way down to meet the man and help him as soon as he could. This is the perfect example of how Rip is not a lazy character at all, but rather one that is willing to help anybody, and drop whatever he is doing in order to do that. A lazy man would have ignored the figure of the struggling person, and instead continued on sleeping and resting without a care in the world. But Rip does in fact do the exact opposite, which I believe to be something that says quite a lot about his character. Even more examples of how Rip Van Winkle was not a lazy man, and quite the opposite, can be found at around the end of our story. “Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the