Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle"

                

Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager is loved by all in his town. However, a his bad habits including avoidance of all productive labor, for which his nagging wife criticizes him, results in his home and farm to fall into disorder due to his lazy carelessness. One day Rip is escaping his wife's nagging, by roaming up in the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being yelled, Rip realizes the speaker is a man dressed in Dutch clothing and carrying a keg up carrying a keg up the mountain, who needs Rip's help. While climbing up the mountain Rip soon stumbles upon discovers the origin of loud noises he heard before and sees a group of silent, Dutch dressed, men who are playing nine-pins. Although there is no exchange and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he begins to drink some of their whiskey, and soon falls asleep. He awakes in strange conditions, his gun is rusty, his beard has rapidly grown, and Wolf is gone. Rip goes back to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Rip soon learns that his wife has passed away and that his friends have also died in a war. He immediately gets into trouble when he declares himself a faithful subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; and the king's portrait in the town has been replaced by George Washington. Rip is also troubled to find another man is being called Rip Van Winkle, although this is his son all grown up. The men he met in the mountains, Rip learns, are supposedly the ghosts of Hendrick Hudson's crew. Rip is told that he has been away from his village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip and Rip's adult daughter takes him in. Rip continues his typical laziness and men in the town after hearing his story wish they could share in Rip's good fortune, and be able to sleep through the sufferings of war.

In Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle it was very easy for me to envision his common character of an early British-American settler. It seems obvious that the very first thing Rip notices when he wakes up is all the changes around him from the rust on his gun, to his physical appearance, and change in his usual surroundings. The changes that occur in a time period of 20 years are quite drastic anywhere, whether it be socially, physically, technologically, or democratically. I think the point of Rip falling asleep and waking up 20 years later was to show the contrast in time and how corrupt America has become. The age he wakes up in has a depressing vibe with war consuming or even taking everyone’s lives. This story is perhaps anti-American as well as anti-war.It really shows how much war was hated with the statement explaining how Rip had the luxury of sleeping for 20 years, so they too might be able to sleep through the raging war. My question for Irving would be does he find any good in the war at all? And although they were terrible, weren't those hardships necessary to bring about freedom?