Rip Van Winkle

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In this story, there seems to be something mythical and something factual. The myth is the long night sleep of Rip and the fact is the changing events of the revolution.

In this story, the author gives us an overall view on a life of a village in the Kaatskill mountains area. Rip Van Winkle is the central character of this story. Irving Washington builds Rip with a quite strange characteristic that makes people hard to understand. He is nice and kind in the eyes of the villages. He is not a lazy fellow; he is unafraid of hard work, he is always ready to assist everyone in his village but his own. Actually, he is really irresponsible to his family and in his wife's eyes he is the lazy and useless man.

The story becomes more interesting as from his awakening after a mythically long sleep. Everything in his village has been changed as he comes back. He does not recognize anything as well as no one recognizes him. So, what has happened to him and his village? And do you think that Rip really spends such a long sleep? Actually, through the character of Rip Van Winkle, the author likes to convey to the readers what has been changed after the American getting independent. We can feel that changing is a natural phenomenon "change of season, change of weather, every hour of a day have something changing." The author uses the image of village here as a representative for people living in the society and Rip is for some people who do not change accordingly or who do not recognize and catch up the changing of a new life. With some people, who lived before the revolution, are complacent ones. They very often sit together talking about nothing, about what happened in several months ago but they become the eager people who are with full energy in take part in the society business. People are on changing for getting a new life, a new culture.

Changing is essential of life and changing is for a better life. Everything is this universal is changing; nature, environment, society...and people have to change accordingly. But Rip does not change at all. The image of a long night sleep of Rip that is through twenty years reflects the speech of social changing and Rip gets nothing through such a long time of changing.

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