Johnathan Oldstyle or Washington Irving, as some might know him, was born on April third, 1783, which was in the eighteenth century. The would-to-be writer was born and raised in New York, New York; what we now know as “The Big City.” He was the youngest out of all his eleven siblings in his family. He, his brothers and sisters were children of Scottish-English Immigrant parents that went by the names of William Sr. and Sarah. Washington Irving himself was apparently named after President George Washington. At the time the American Revolution had just taken place and the presidential inauguration was held in President Washington’s name in 1789. Washington Irving was taught privately and began to write his essays. He used a different name for
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The story supposedly takes place in a Post- Revolutionary War America. It is one out of few stories by Irving that actually takes place in America. In the town of Sleepy Hollow, the people are described as soporific humans, not really questioning much. It is as if they are under a spell, according to the narrator in the book. The first couple of paragraphs in the book provide detail about a mist. This mist is supposedly the reason why the people are sleepy; therefore making it the spell-caster you could say. The town’s infectious sleepiness grasps the reader’s attention right away. The story’s setting is a continuous attention-grabber that lasts throughout the entire book and the reader does not know what next to expect as the narrator shares the story. Who is the narrator though? Diedrich Knickerbocker, another one of Irving’s pseudonyms, is the narrator. He apparently heard the story from an elderly man and is now sharing it with the reader. Readers may become a bit confused by the end of the book. This might be due to the multiple dialogues told by some character(s). It is told in a third person objective viewpoint to distance the reader from people in the story. While one will naturally think that the narrator is a know-it all, it turns out that he is not. In one instance he even forgets the details of what one character says to another before they
The story supposedly takes place in a Post- Revolutionary War America. It is one out of few stories by Irving that actually takes place in America. In the town of Sleepy Hollow, the people are described as soporific humans, not really questioning much. It is as if they are under a spell, according to the narrator in the book. The first couple of paragraphs in the book provide detail about a mist. This mist is supposedly the reason why the people are sleepy; therefore making it the spell-caster you could say. The town’s infectious sleepiness grasps the reader’s attention right away. The story’s setting is a continuous attention-grabber that lasts throughout the entire book and the reader does not know what next to expect as the narrator shares the story. Who is the narrator though? Diedrich Knickerbocker, another one of Irving’s pseudonyms, is the narrator. He apparently heard the story from an elderly man and is now sharing it with the reader. Readers may become a bit confused by the end of the book. This might be due to the multiple dialogues told by some character(s). It is told in a third person objective viewpoint to distance the reader from people in the story. While one will naturally think that the narrator is a know-it all, it turns out that he is not. In one instance he even forgets the details of what one character says to another before they