of peripheral characters, such as the magical people in the woods who send Rip to sleep for 20 years, than he does of Rip. Irving seems to have done this on purpose, deliberately leaving it up to readers to conjure their own visions of how the young and old Van Winkle would have appeared. This is not unusual for the period: Jane Austen also often leaves it up to the reader to supply the specific details of the appearances of her main characters, such as Darcy and Elizabeth inPride and Prejudice. 

Rip starts out being described as a mild and well-liked man in his village. But the narrator takes pains to explain that the reason he is mild and agreeable to neighbors is that he has been taught to be humbled and docile by the tyranny of an domineering wife at home. We know that she delivers "curtain lectures" (which is an idiom for giving him scoldings at night, after retiring to bed, behind the bed curtains drawn about the bed for protection from drafts and for added warmth) but we don't know for sure if he deserves the lectures by being slovenly and unproductive or if she simply has a fiery, unloving temperament. So while we know the appearance of his character traits, we don't really know the cdepth of his character traits.

[Rip's temper was] rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.

After he comes down from the mountain to a village (and a world) radically changed, Rip can indulge what we now know--following his description of his son: "a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up to the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged"--are his natural inclinations (meaning he may have deserved the "curtain lectures") and do nothing but talk the time away.

The change indicated here is one that reflects a symbolic liberation from the imposition of constraints that are ill suited to natural inclinations (symbolic of the tyranny of the kingship of George). So Rip changes, once he is accepted by his village, from a nice, compliant, docile man who is afraid of the tyranny of his wife (who seems to be naturally unpleasant according to the report of her death: "she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion") to a nice, compliant, docile old man who can happily practice his natural inclinations without fear, dread, guilt and oppressive tyranny (all in all, Rip doesn't change that much except physically and that is merely the natural result of time).

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village.

Washington Irving's story "Rip Van Winkle" relates an old Dutch tale about a man who falls asleep one day, has astonishing dreams, and then wakes up twenty years later. 

Before Rip Van Winkle has a little drink and falls asleep, he is not a very productive man. In fact, he cares little for his family and spends most of his time trying to avoid work. 

Rip Van Winkle...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.

Unfortunately for him, Van Winkle is married to a nagging woman who thinks a man should work and provide for his family rather than sit, content with his idleness.

If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband.

This was Van Winkle's life before his long sleep, and his only ally was his dog. He was not a happy or productive man.

During his twenty-year absence, many things in the world have changed but Van Winkle has not. In fact, there is only one great change in his life: his wife died (from yelling too hard at a peddler). So, one word which best describes this formerly hen-pecked husband is relieved. Now he can still sit around and do nothing, but he never has to hear his shrewish wife harp at him about his idleness. Van Winkle  was not productive before, and he is not productive now; but he is relieved.

He is also content because he has no obligations, has ‘‘nothing to do at home.’’ Even as he watches his same lack of productivity in his son, he is unconcerned because it does not affect him. Another reason for his contentment is that he has a story to tell--and he tells it to everyone who will listen. Irving tells us that before long, there was "not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart." He is content in his idleness.

The last word to describe the older Rip Van Winkle is up to the reader to decide: is he sane or crazy? Either his fantastical story is true and Van Winkle is sane, or he is just a crazy old man who went away and came back with this fantastical account of "a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins" in an amphitheatre. 

In short, Rip Wan Winkle did not undergo the grand change one might have expected after so long an absence; instead he was happier for having rid himself of anything that hindered his idleness. Rip Van Winkle is certainly relieved and content, but each reader must determine whether he is crazy or sane.

It's tempting to say that Rip is a lazy man, but I do not think that does him justice. While he doesn't care much about his own appearance or taking care of his wife and family, he is absolutely willing to lend a hand to anybody in need regardless of how difficult the labor may be.

He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

He is a kind and good-natured man who loves to talk with just about anybody. Additionally, Rip is the kind of guy that is great with kids. The text tells readers that kids would "shout with joy" whenever Rip was seen coming toward them. They loved him as a storyteller, but Rip is also a man who loved to play with the kids as well. Rip's overall great demeanor is something that flows out of him so much that not even dogs get upset at his presence. As for physical traits, the text doesn't give readers much to go on. We are told that he wears old clothes and likes to carry a gun with him. By the end of the story, he is an old man with a long gray beard.

Having spent several years touring Europe, Washington Irving held a great fondness for the cultures of the Old World. In his story, "Rip van Winkle," this love of the European culture, especially the Dutch settlers in New York, becomes evident.

The story begins with a description of the magnificent Katskill Mountains and the surrounding area. Despite his termagant wife's scoldings that he should be farming, Rip enjoys a leisurely life at the inn where "a rubicund portrait of his majesty George the Third" hangs. But, even here Dame van Winkle assaults him with her Puritan scoldings; therefore, Rip takes to the higher parts of the mountains with his gun and dog Wolf.where he can lose himself in "the blue highlands." After a leisurely day, Rip begins his descent, but is accosted strange little Dutchman who enlists his help in carrying a large keg. As he helps this little man, he sees even more in the habiliments of the Old Dutch. Enlisted to pour from the keg into the flagons of the company, Rip sneaks drinks for himself until he falls into a deep sleep. 

It is twenty years later that Rip awakens; without realizing how long he has slept, he imagines that his rifle has been stolen and replaced with a rusty one. Looking futilely for his dog, Rip decides that he must return home alone. Upon his arrival, he finds the house "empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned." Desolate, Rip hurries to the village inn where nothing is as it has been. The portrait of King George III is gone and replaced with one named "General Washington." The nature of the people has also altered,

There was a busy, bustling diputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility....In place of [van Bummel the schoolmaster] a lean bilious-looking fellow with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about right of citizens--elections--member of Congress--liberty--...heroes of Seventy-six--and other words whench were a perfect Babylonsih jargon to the bewildered van Winkle.

Rip himself, with his long beard and rustic appearance becomes a curiosity to the women and children, who crowd around his to his "vacant stupidity." Nor does he understand what a man in a three-cornered hat accosts him, asking why he has come to the election with a gun.  When Rip tells him he is a quiet man, a loyal subject to the King, the others shout, "A Tory! A Tory!" and the man in authority demands to know what intentions Rip has in being there.

In short, Rip's entire world has changed. His wife is dead from breaking a blood vessel "in a fit of passion" at a New England peddler, and his friends are gone, dead or in Congress of moved away. His children are grown, Rip van Winkle, junior, is as indolent as his father, while his daughter, Judith Gardenier, who has married an industrious farmer, takes her father into her home. After Peter Vanderdonk, descendant of the historian of the same name identifies Rip van Winkle, the townspeople no longer think he is insane, and Rip spends his days telling his story at Mr. Doolittle's Hotel, the former inn where he sat years ago.