How does Irving reveal character in "Rip Van Winkle"?
Rips reveals character through the description of people like Rip, his wife, and his daughter as the narrator sees them.
For example, the narrator describes Rip as constantly blaming his farm for being the problem it is and not the fact that he, Rip, won't keep up with the work. The passage below tells us quite a bit about Rip's refusal to take responsibility for his life:
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 narrator also tells us that Rip:
was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself,...
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he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment
Rip, in other words, is understood by the narrator as a happy-go-lucky sort of man who isn't inclined to work hard or plan for the future. He is simply happy to bump along any way he can.
His wife, however, is described, from the narrator's point of view, as following:
Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and every thing he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence.
Dame van Winkle is, understandably enough, upset at Rip's lack of ambition and also at his irresponsibility. We learn she tells him about it, using her words to try to motivate him to action, a tactic that only drives him out of the home.
We find out too that Rip's daughter seems to have turned out better than either of her parents, for she is responsible and has a pleasant house and a good husband:
Rip’s daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband
Through the information the narrator provides, we are able to discern much about the personalities of the main characters.
How does Irving mock the new American hero in "Rip Van Winkle"?
In Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces,he describes the three stages of the archetypal hero: separation, initiation and return. He then talks about different heroes such as Odysseus, who leaves home, has many adventures and is tested in many ways, then comes home wiser; and usually, the returned hero can help his fellow citizens by what he learned while on his quest. Frodo Baggins, in The Lord of the Rings, is another hero archetype because he fits this definition of separation, initiation (quest) and return.
This progression is also reminiscent of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" in which a philosopher must get out of the cave in order to see some Absolute Truth. He is then to return and teach or help others. In fact, the story of Rip Van Winkle does deride the archetypal hero. It also shares a quality with the returning adventurer in "The Allegory of the Cave" because the hero might return to find nothing recognizable and he might be met with hostility rather than thanks for attempting to enlighten others with what he'd learned while on his quest.
Unlike Odysseus and Frodo Baggins, Rip Van Winkle does not have a triumphant return. He is not greeted as a hero. In fact, even after Peter Vanderdonk confirmed Rip's story, the townspeople just shrug it off. "To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election" (23). Rip is a mock hero because he follows the structure of a hero's separation from the world, quest and return. It's just that his quest is less than heroic.
A lot of questions have been asked about the relation of this story to the American Revolution and the American Hero. One interpretation is that Rip is kind of a Romantic hero but the new, real heroes in America are groups of individuals, the collective (united) states of America which won their independence while the Romantic hero, Rip, was asleep.
However, there is something quietly heroic about Rip. He seemed meek and inconsequential, especially in those descriptions as being a "hen-pecked" husband and generally lazy. "The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor" (9). But, he never hesitated to help others. "He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil . . . (10). And yet, as for his own family duty or in terms of a larger social role, he did very little.
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