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Washington irving legend of sleepy hollow analysis
The literary analysis of the legend of sleepy hollow
The legend of sleepy hollow 1000 words critical essay
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Washington Irving presents two of the chosen short stories, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”, by saying they are works of a Diedrich Knickerbocker. The reason he published the stories under that name came from the fact that his brothers were all in the study of law. Irving tried that career out for a while, but the he quickly grew bored. He told his brothers that he wanted to find a different career. When he started writing, he grew embarrassed and decided to change his name in printing.
In both “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Pelayo and the Merchant’s Daughter” a major character travels frequently. Irving bounced around where he lived, due to money and jobs. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” the main character, Ichabod Crane, comes into the small town for the job of school master, just as Irving chased the jobs. In “Pelayo and the Merchant’s Daughter” the main characters, as mentioned in the title, both travel for jobs as well.
In each story, the historical setting happens during a time in Irving’s life. In “Rip Van Winkle”, the time before Rip Van Winkle sleeps is 1763. When he wakes up, the time is 1783, the year of Irving’s birth. In “Pelayo and the Merchant’s Daughter”, the historical setting is 1819. Irving died in 1859, so that is also in his life. Lastly, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is in 1790, also in his lifetime. At times it is easier to write in the years we know and Irving did that in these three short stories.
Another similarity is that the in all the stories chosen, none of the main characters are in business. Irving hated business in his own life, which is the reason he preformed law with his brothers for a period of time. In these stories, the characters are lazy and do...
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...of this short story is to give the reader a feeling of love and mystery. Irving accomplished this by throwing in the perfect combination of silly crushes at the beginning and headless horseman that might or might not be a joke in the end. I enjoyed this story and it was one of my favorite stories out of the three that I read.
These three short stories have many similarities to each other and to the author, Irving’s, life. As I explored deeper into these short stories, I found out that many doors are opened in these few pages of text. Many revelations and understanding has come from exploring deeper into each and every one of these three short stories by Irving. “Rip Van Winkle”, “Pelayo and the Merchant’s Daughter”, and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” have all helped me laugh and I have enjoyed diving into them and discovering a whole world of short stories.
Throughout Irving’s story, he used characterization, irony, the dreams, and other literacy devices to bring The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to life for Irving’s audience.
In Washington Irving’s work “Rip Van Winkle,” Irving demonstrates all characteristics of an American Mythology rather humorously. These characteristics affect the story attracting the attention of readers and impacting the reader’s experience of the story by relishing America’s unique attributes and values. In “Rip Van Winkle,” Irving incorporates attributes of American Mythology by setting the story in exciting pastimes, filling the story with strange and exaggerated characters, and featuring magical mysterious events.
?The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? is a short story by Washington Irving. Based on a well-known legend, this story tells the tale of the disappearance of the main character, Ichabod Crane. An effective ghost story, Irving leaves you guessing what the truth is behind the ending. The movie Sleepy Hollow is Hollywood?s portrayal of Irving?s original story. Although the movie is similar to the story in the beginning, the movie takes a twist that leads in another direction that strays far from the original plot.
Over time the language of the original text of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Irving has been reworked to accommodate the change in audience. The Heath Anthology of American Literature has an unabridged version of the original wording (1354-1373). A complete copy of the original text of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" can be found in the young adolescent classic section of a bookstore or the juvenile section in the library. A juvenile edition of the text adapted by Arthur Rackham from 1928 was a replicate of the original it is filled with seven colored illustrations and numerous sketching. A young adolescent version adapted by Bryan Brown from 2001 has been abridged to accommodate the current young reader. The format is changed in Brownâs edition. The yo...
Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe were both writers who exemplified the writing style of the Romantic era. Both writers used their great talents to take the reader into the story. For example, Irving, in “Rip Van Winkle”, starts the story by saying, “Whoever has made a courage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains.” He also involves the reader in the story by taking us into the everyday lives of the Van Winkles and goes into some detail describing Rip’s “business”. Poe also demonstrates his ability to pull the reader into the story. In “The Fall of the House Usher” he uses extensive descriptions of the settings to give the reader the feeling of being there while the story is developing around them. The writers are also similar in the use of tone in their works. Irving’s use of tone in his stories is typically lighthearted, yet dramatic. This is demonstrated in “Rip Van Winkle” when Rip comes back from the “Kaatskills” and is talking to all the people in the town. There, he finds his son and daughter and asks, “Where’s your mother?” By asking this question, Irving implies both curiosity and even fear if Dame Van Winkle is still around. This humorous approach to the subject of Rip’s wife, makes light of ...
At first glance, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving seems to be an innocent tale about a superstitious New England town threatened by a strange new comer, Icabod Crane. However, this descriptive narrative is more than just a simple tale because it addresses several gender issues that deserve attention. The pervasiveness of female influence in Sleepy Hollow and the conflict between male and female storytelling in this Dutch community are two pertinent gender issues that complicate Irving's work and ultimately enable the women of Sleepy Hollow to control the men and maintain order.
Although at times it is easy to get carried away with the adventure of a story, noticing the elements a writer has put into his work is very important. In reading “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” you can see both similarities as well as differences of how both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving chose to illuminate their romantic writing styles. The writers both use a mystical woodsy setting with supernatural twists to draw in readers. Underlying you will find the differing romantic themes each writer used, as well as how each writer chose to end their work.
Have you ever imagined being asleep in the forest for twenty years, coming back home and not knowing what has gone on all those years of your absence? Rip Van Winkle went through that, and had to come back home and face some real changes. The author Washington Irving has some interesting characters whom he puts in his short stories. Irving puts some characters in his short stories to reflect on some of his life. For example, Irving has similarities between Rip Van Winkle being asleep in the forest 20 years and Irving was in Europe for seventeen writing short stories and being the governor’s aid and military secretary. These two situations are similar, because they both didn’t know what they were going to come back too and were gone for such a long period of time. Irving does put some of his own life into his short stories and with a reason for his self-reflective works.
Washington Irving created a pseudo historian for the purpose of bettering his own work and to entertain his readers. In 1809 Irving wrote "A History of New York" through a persona known as Diedrich Knickerbocker. This was Knickerbocker's first appearance in Irving's work, but it sure wouldn't be his last. Although he was not real, Knickerbocker was a historian that seemed to be in love with the people and landscape of the northeast, particularly New York. Even though Irving never revealed it, some of his characteristics may be found within Knickerbocker's writing.
Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle with the American people in mind. At this time society was changing drastically. America was attempting to go through a struggle with forming their own identity. America was wanting to have an identity that would set them free from English culture and rule. Irving uses his main character, Rip Van Winkle, to symbolize America. Rip goes through the same struggles that America was going through at this time before and after the Revolution. Irving uses such great symbolism in this story to describe the changes that American society went through. This story covers a wide variety of time periods including: America before English rule, early American colonies under English rule, and America after the Revolutionary War.
Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” was adapted into a movie titled “Sleepy Hollow” directed by Tim Burton nearly two centuries after the original publication. When the story was adapted as a film, several extensive changes were made. A short story easily read in one sitting was turned into a nearly two-hour thriller, mystery, and horror movie by incorporating new details and modifying the original version of the story. The short story relates the failed courtship of Katrina Van Tassel by Ichabod Crane. His courtship is cut short by the classic romance antagonist-the bigger, stronger, and better looking Broom Bones. Ichabod wishes to marry Katrina because of her beauty but also because of the wealthy inheritance she will receive when her father, Baltus Van Tassel and stepmother, Lady Van Tassel die. However, the film tells the story of Ichabod Crane as an investigator who is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the recent decapitations that are occurring. These modifications alter the original story entirely, thus failing to capture the Irving’s true interpretation of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The film and the original story have similarities and differences in the plot, characters, and setting.
In Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” an allegorical reading can be seen. The genius of Irving shines through, in not only his representation in the story, but also in his ability to represent both sides of the hot political issues of the day. Because it was written during the revolutionary times, Irving had to cater to a mixed audience of Colonists and Tories. The reader’s political interest, whether British or Colonial, is mutually represented allegorically in “Rip Van Winkle,” depending on who is reading it. Irving uses Rip, Dame, and his setting to relate these allegorical images on both sides. Irving would achieve success in both England and America, in large part because his political satires had individual allegorical meanings.
For the adults He helped the children in the village in a variety of ways “He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles…” (31). He was liked by everyone for all the generous things he would do for others. This was not the situation he had in his home though. The first section of the story symbolizes the personal depression of Rip Van Winkle by introducing his daily life in the Hudson river town place. Always seemed like a likable character to other except his wife. His son was exactly the same as him. His daughter wasn’t. In his personal life Van Winkle did not display any motivation to work for himself. his wife Dame Van Winkle would always scold him for practically any decision he made. She could be seen as the greatest instigator for his lack of motivation. Which leads to believe that deep down Rip Van Winkle could have been going through a form of depression and that could be what Irving was trying to describe inadvertently and possibly be a cry for help from himself. Irving wrote the story in a way that it could be narrated by a fictional character Diedrich Knickerbocker, who acts as the narrator for other tales from the same book, which could entail why there are not direct sources for the sadness Van Winkle was probably having thus giving the reader a bigger gap to think with their imagination on what could really be
Washington Irving's, "Rip Van Winkle" presented a tale of a "dreamer." Rip Van Winkle was a family man
The improbable plots and unlikely characterization showed how much they used creativity. According to a Romanticism article, “The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate ‘shaping’ or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity” (“Romanticism”). They believe that imagination is an essential and amazing ability that humans possess. Romantic authors often included examples of imagination and creativity within their works. In the short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the supernatural plot and improbable characters illustrate the imagination of Romanticism writers (Irving). Washington Irving must have used a significant amount of creativity to come up with a story that involves a headless ghost riding a horse. He thought outside of his reality and environment in order to create an impossible and fascinating character. The Romantics favored imagination and creativity because they realized how invaluable it truly