Catskill Park

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…

Washington Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle was a man looking to escape his troubles. When he escaped he slept for twenty years. During his sleep wars were won and lost, a new country was formed and people moved on from their memory of him. Rip Van Winkle’s town, townspeople, and house changed physically and politically while he stayed in the past during his sleep. His sleep demonstrates Irving’s idea of escapism. Irving writes how Rip Van Winkle wanted to escape due to his troubles. Before…

“Rip Van Winkle”, written by Washington Irving, is about a man in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up twenty years later, having missed the American Revolution. The setting of “Rip Van Winkle” is in New York before and after the American Revolution. Irving uses historical allegory to create an American Romantic folktale that strengthens the national identity of the newly formed country. The main character and protagonist of the story is…

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…

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…

The heart of a story lies in the moral. Once a story has been read, the reader must understand the moral, in order to appreciate the story. Sometimes a story 's moral can be explained with a cliché. Washington Irving 's Rip Van Winkle, can be captured by the cliché, you reap what you sow. Rip 's life was not fruitful, as many years were wasted, causing him to not reap any rewards. The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, follows a man plagued by the obsession to remove his wife 's birthmark, in…

Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” exemplifies the theory of imagination using escapism. After sleeping for 20 years, readers are forced to distinguish between Rip’s fantasy and his past. In addition, Rip awakens in another time, therefore his imagination, and intelligence is more developed than the townspeople, or his wife ever thought. Rip’s imagination not only created a free nation, he also freed himself from a nightmarish marriage. Throughout the tale of “Rip Van Winkle,” Irving paints a clear…

James Cooper and Washington Irving: Different but Alike Washington Irving was born on April 3rd, 1783. He spent his childhood growing up in Manhattan, New York alongside of his ten other siblings. His parents were William and Sarah Irving, his mother was the granddaughter of a clergyman, and his father was an affluent merchant who strongly supported the cause of American Independence. All of Williams sons were expected to support themselves so therefore, he sent Washington to study law in 1801,…

When his wife scolded him in front of his friends, he decided enough was enough, took his gun in hand and left to the solidarity of the woods, followed by his trusty friend Wolf. Rip found himself atop a high peak of the Kaatskills (now renamed “Catskills”), He found the solitude blissful and even the reverberations of the gunshots as he killed squirrels caused him no trouble. He decided to take a break and found a nice grassy knoll that overlooked a cliff. He watched in awe as afternoon turned…