Rip Van Winkle

After Rip Van Winkle's strange ordeal with the men playing nine-pins on the mountain, he falls into a deep, drunken slumber. Upon waking, he is concerned that he may have slept on the mountain all...

There are several ways in which ‘Rip Van Winkle’ can be accounted a romantic tale. In literature, the word ‘romantic’ can be used, in the broadest sense, to refer to any story or poem which deals...

Washington Irving's "Rip van Winkle" has become a story that represents the Early American literary voice. One of the goals of Irving was to give the new country of the United States, some of the...

A satire pokes fun at a problem to make a social comment, often through using exaggeration. In "Rip Van Winkle," Irving uses the character of Rip to satirize the lackadaisical, apathetic ways of...

The major supernatural event in "Rip Van Winkle" is Rip's falling asleep for twenty years. We are prepared for this when Rip, on one of his rambles, meets mysterious people in a secluded section of...

When Rip returns after twenty years and mentions that he was asleep, the townspeople begin to look at each other, winking and tapping their foreheads, indicating that they think Rip has gone crazy....

Rip Van Winkle sleeps for twenty years in imitation of the old German legend of "Peter Klaus," upon which it is based; also, his somnolence for these two decades allows him to sleep through the...

Note how, as you move beyond this story's introductory section, it actually opens with a literary picture of the Catskills. From there, it transitions to the village before finally introducing the...

Rip at first wonders, when he comes home from having been asleep for twenty years, if he is "bewitched." He believes he has been gone only one night, but everything around him seems changed. He...

The message or moral presented in "Rip Van Winkle" is that if you don't work while you are young and don't make something of yourself, you will wake up one day and find that you have grown old, you...

The opening paragraph reveals a romantic, though not uncritical, fascination with nature: the Catskill mountains are described as "noble" and "magical." These are called "fairy mountains." We...

The story takes place in the Catskill Mountains in New York, west of the Hudson river. The author describes the mountains as follows: They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family,...

Rip van Winkle is a humorous cautionary tale. I may have a slightly different take. I think it is about wasting away your life, and letting the world pass you by. So many people just go about...

Rip is popular with the children of the village because he “helps at their sports, makes their playthings, teaches them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and tells them long stories of ghosts,...

Very early in the story, the narrator describes Dame Van Winkle as a "termagant wife." She is constantly nagging Rip about his laziness and his "aversion to all types of profitable labor." She is...

One similarity between "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is the setting; each takes place in an American Dutch enclave in upstate New York. Both utilize the peaceful, pastoral...

Rip himself has an old-fashioned concept of the American dream, one that predates the founding of the United States. His personal dream is of freedom from responsibility, what would later be...

Irving uses verbal irony in the story. Verbal irony occurs when a statement means the opposite of what it literally states. Irving pokes fun at the do-nothing men who sit in front of the inn,...

Some of the most vivid description in the story is of these mysterious people. Rip meets these men in an amphitheater deep in the Catskills. They are wearing "quaint" old-fashioned Dutch clothing:...

There is definitely a quality by which Rip Van Winkle's married life represents a domestic struggle. As a character, Rip is defined largely in terms of his laziness (much to the annoyance of his...

"Rip van Winkle" is a story that highlights the rapid social changes brought about by the American Revolution. One symbol of that is the quiet inn that turns into the bustling Yankee hotel. Before...

Rip Van Winkle provides a window to the American Revolution from the vantage of a Dutch burger in the Catskill mountains. What changed in Rip's world was the sovereign authority to whom the locals...

Rip is the complete antithesis to the self-made Benjamin Franklin. While Franklin is an ambitious go-getter who starts his own newspaper and is active and involved in politics, Rip is a...

The answer to your question comes in the 1st line of the 5th paragraph: The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. Having an "aversion" to...

Romanticism was a reaction against what the Romantic writers saw as the excessive rationalism of the Augustan or Neoclassic Age of eighteenth century literature. The Romantics sought to tell...

When Rip Van Winkle goes on "a long ramble . . . on a fine autumnal day," he inadvertently finds himself in one of the highest parts of the Catskill Mountains in what is nowadays southeastern New...

When Rip Van Winkle awakens from his 20 years of sleep, the world around him is remarkably changed. In that short time, the country went through the American Revolution and declared its...

Irving might be suggesting that the American Revolution brought about great changes to the country. Rip Van Winkle falls asleep for twenty years and misses the entire American Revolution. When he...

Wolf is the name of Rip Van Winkle's dog. In many ways, I'd suggest that Wolf represents Winkle's life back in the colonial era, lost forever after his long sleep, and the changes that have...

As once can imagine, many people in the village are understandably skeptical about Rip's story. The idea that someone could fall asleep for twenty years is simply too preposterous to believe. So...

“Rip Van Winkle” is not a true story but a work of fiction by Washington Irving, who included the tale in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. In the story, however, Rip Van...

It would be hard to find a character more unlike Benjamin Franklin than Rip Van Winkle. Benjamin Franklin exemplifies the spirit of thrift, hard-work, and "can-do" pragmatism. Rip, in contrast, is...

The fictional Sir Geoffrey Crayon, narrator, and Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving's fictional Dutch-American historian, serve as the framers of the tales and essays of The Sketchbook as Irving...

The device of framing the story of "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving and the fact that we have to suspend our disbelief as we read it both stem from the fact that it is a fantasy or tall tale...

1. As a writer in the Romantic period, Washington Irving describes the Catskill Mountains as both beautiful, majestic, and mysterious. Van Winkle's colonial village is either the real village of...

Although Benjamin Franklin did not himself claim to be a self-made man, the term was frequently applied to him in the nineteenth century, most notably in speeches by Henry Clay and Frederick...

After waking from his twenty-year sleep and returning to the village, Rip Van Winkle is having trouble convincing everyone of the truth of his story. And no wonder—it all seems so incredibly...

The main idea of the story is to show how much the world has changed since Rip fell asleep twenty years before. It is a celebration of American independence from Britain. Rip is apathetic,...

Shortly after Rip Van Winkle returns to his village after sleeping for twenty years in the Kaatskill Mountains, the villagers gather to listen to Rip explain his story. However, the community...

The narrator describes how Dame Van Winkle would respond to one of Rip's shrugs. This provokes a "fresh volley" from his wife. "Volley" can mean to kick or hit a ball (as in tennis or volleyball)...

There are a number of different important messages in Rip Van Winkle, but many critics have focused on, and debated over, Washington's point about the political, social, and cultural change that...

This is a bit of a tricky question, because the narrator emphasizes that everything has changed in the village. The question might be referring to one of two things -- the mountain scene, or the...

The narrator says twice in the opening that Rip is good natured and that this earns him "universal popularity." He is easy going, he lives in the moment, and he likes people. He is always ready to...

Irving uses personification to establish a sense of connection with the mountains, writing that "they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits," as if they are human beings putting on...

Washington Irving, in Rip Van Winkle, provides many different hints as to provide Rip with clues to the fact that he is no longer in the same time period in which he fell asleep. The first clue...

One of the main conflicts in "Rip Van Winkle" is the tension in the marriage between Rip and Dame Van Winkle. The two characters have such different personalities, and their lack of compatibility...