Henry Irving

“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…

Throughout the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving writes a story about two boys growing up and learning the works of the world. The protagonist, John Wheelwright, is narrating the book about his life as an adult and sharing details about his childhood. In his childhood, he writes about his closest companion, Owen Meany. Owen leads John to become an anti-American, pessimistic, all girls private school teacher in Canada. As John is going through college and Owen is serving the Vietnam war…

Washington Irving was one of the best fiction writers of the early nineteenth century. He was the first American fiction writer to obtain an international reputation. He was also named for George Washington, the first president. Irving wrote “The Devil and Tom Walker” in the early nineteenth century, and the story took place in 1727. The story’s point of view was in the third person. The story’s setting took place at Charles Bay, near Boston Massachusetts. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” it is…

God’s Instrument After years of typing away on his antique typewriter for hours on end, the Oscar winning storyteller John Irving triumphantly finished his seventh novel A Prayer For Owen Meany in 1989. The emotional tugging that the novel forces upon its audience made it one of the most read novels of the 20th century (McCarthy 2). This humorous yet heart wrenching tale tells of an unlikely friendship between two boys just before the Vietnam era. As a time full of war, death, and lost hope;…

A Life of Selfishness and Greed The author of “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Washington Irving, became a famed author of 19th century America. He was born in New York and became one of the first American fiction authors to gain international acclaim. Irving began his career writing satire essays, and he was specifically known for his works, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” In his work “The Devil and Tom Walker”, he tells the story of a man and woman whose greed was to such an…

write about the unique nature surrounding America, the diverse culture, and the abundance of individuals with their own thoughts and emotions; but most importantly, they wrote about the use of the individuals thought over that of the government 's. Henry David Thoreau is a well-known author of the Romantic era and his writing best encompasses “his ecological consciousness, do-it-yourself independence, ethical commitment to abolitionism, and political theory of civil disobedience and peaceful…

and strong of arm." Similarly, Rip 's wife was also abusive to her husband, "A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing." The female protagonist are both nagging and abusive to their husbands. Washington Irving must have written the female protagonist in his stories to be nagging and abusive because he knew women in the village that were the same characteristics to their…

the other hand, emphasized on connecting the past with the present. Many writers like Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne relied heavily on using romanticism and transcendentalism in their works. Transcendentalists focused on connecting to nature among other things, while romantics were fascinated by the connection of the past and present. Throughout Walden by Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalism…

portrayed in the short story from romanticism was the introspection, psychology, and supernatural concepts. This was shown by the devil’s presence which is a supernatural concept and it was trying to make a deal with Tom that will give him wealth. Irving states, “He thought with regret of the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent churchgoer.”. In other words, Tom was scared about…