Rip Van Winkle American Dream

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Essay Two A common idea throughout the United States is that a person is to work their hardest, notably, with some type of aspiration within their mind that they would like to achieve. With that being the case, even a virtually inescapable predicament is not considered to be a justification for the inability of achieving a personal goal or subjective goal that was passed to themselves from another person. Subsequently, within the short story “Rip Van Winkle,” the titular character has an absence of ambition within his life. Rather to hard work, he spends his days casually lazing about in the forest with his dog Wolf. As well as these actions resulting in frequent derision from his wife. Hence that Rip Van Winkle is antithetical to popular …show more content…

Again, Rip is said to be a man who is perfectly content with his life, and does not care to compete for a minor chance at being on top. Identically, it yet again exemplifies the scarcity of motivation Rip has to anything. Altogether, Rip does not have the mindset one would normally have if they were in pursuit of the American dream in the first place. Alternatively to what is a general conception of the American dream; it is important to further establish how Rip distances himself away from it. As stated previously, “The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor.” (405). Rip’s lack of success is attributed to his lack of a decent work ethic. Not as a matter of perception from characters within the story, but the narrator outright stating this establishes how distant Rip is from common American thought. In addition, when Rip was faced with contempt from his wife he’d, “Escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the …show more content…

His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain had always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do,”

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