Unlike Franklin, Irving questions the American work ethic and the rising importance of materialism and commercialism. He calls these values into question in Rip Van Winkle. Rip will work to help others, but not to make money. He'll take care of others, but not his own family. But in defense of his wife I'd be nagging him too if he let the house fall apart and neglected his children. Maybe she is supposed to be the voice of the Puritans, or the voice of the Utilitarians who Irving is trying to rally against in this piece. He has no interest in material gain. He is in fact rebelling against the narrowness of conventional American life and conformity. Rip's awakening can be viewed as the awakening of the American consciousness. He awakens to a world that has passed him by, yet little has truly changed. A picture of King George is replaced by one of General George. Irving obviously did not share in the belief that Europe was an antiquated and corrupt power which had to be overthrown.
His adventures on the prairie removed him from "civilization" and placed him in an environment which was much like the one that the Indians inhabited. This perhaps led him to better identify with and understand them, ultimately leading to his being more sympathetic towards their situation and lifestyle. {Laura Stallman}
Crayon, Knickerbocker,
and Irving all seem to be somewhat the same person. By using these other
characters or pseudonyms Irving can criticize himself, or even make fun
of himself.
First and foremost the epigraph
states that the truth will be told. Everything written will be true. Of
course, it isn't all truth, so the epigraph is a bit of irony.
Rip is a lazy man who really
does not care much about anything important. His farm has dwindled away
to a wasteland, he neglects his wife and children, and likes to partake
in acts of leisure. He spends some of his time with his friends, listening
to them talk about philosophical, and worldly matters, but I do not get
the feeling that Rip gets too involved. Perhaps this is how Irving views
the American public, as surface and shallow, lazy, and not all too intelligent
(or perhaps this is how he thought the population of Europe felt about
American's probably both, since he had this internal battle between American
and European values). {Patrick}
I. Irving's fictional personas become progressively more concealed behind layers of irony. For instance, we begin with Geoffrey Crayon, the supposed compiler of the tales in The Sketch Book, many of which were found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, who in turn wrote down the stories from oral or cultural sources. This triadic structure, Cultural source > Diedrich Knickerbocker > Geoffrey Crayon creates an historical illusion, a progressive or linear sense of the passing of time. Irving's purpose is twofold: he wants to place the narratives sufficiently far back in time so that they assume the significance of myth or folklore, which in turn dismisses his narrative as quaint or trivial fiction, and excuses the author, Washington Irving, from sentimental romanticizing.
Yet another motive of course is the narrative refinement of irony in which Irving excels. He pokes fun not only at himself as author in this triadic distortion, but also the very convention of narrative itself. His stories are legend or folklore, but not that which is the direct expression of an oral culture: rather, it is the form a sophisticated writer uses lightheartedly, a means to looking back upon a simpler mode of being with fondness and light irony. And especially a means to ironizing American experience and themes, and thus the art of American storytelling. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" are as significantly about American narrative as they are about the invention of American folklore
. This layering of irony is clear in "The Author's Account of Himself," an account not only of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman, but Irving too. The very epithet "Gentleman" suggests a placid undistinguished uppermiddle class person who spends his leisure, which we can only assume is a substantial amount of time, in the bookish pursuit of collecting tales known under the singular title The Sketch Book. Even in the epithet a level of selfdeprecating irony is created Irving's fictional persona is born. An ironic tension is similarly generated between reality and illusion: the reality of Crayon as boring bookworm and the illusion (or delusion?) of Crayon as Romantic prototype, the adventurous wanderer/explorer among ruins of old. "I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners." Later he mentions a certain "rambling propensity" in his youth, the quality of a dashing Romantic hero. Other characteristics of Crayon include: a curiosity in antiquarian matters (which deflates his Romantic image instead of constructing it), literary zeal, and an undeniable patriotism ("no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery"), which includes subtle mockery of English elitism ("I will visit this land (England) of wonder, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated"). All of these characteristics describe Irving the man as well. Unusual in literary convention, the fictional personas he creates are closely associated with the author less masks than spokespersons.
Crayon is very similar to Deidrich Knickerbocker, a scholarly school teacher, especially in regards to mental attitude and characteristics. Both stand in parallel relation to each other, and both in turn in parallel relation to Irving. Irving conceals himself in these two fictional personas, but never to the point of total immersion or creating "characters" fundamentally different from his own.
II. The epigraph at the beginning is connected to the story in that it reveals something of Rip Van Winkle. The reference to Woden, "God of Saxons," positions the epigraph in the remote (AngloSaxon) past, and in a mythological past at that. Similarly, the folklore of Rip takes place in the (American) mythological past. The "truth" that the poet espouses is one simple truth he will carry "into/My sepulcher." Rip also maintains one truth or perspective in life, which will remain steady and unchanging until his death: the philosophy of "taking care of every one else's business but his own." Rip's simple truth is his carefree parochialism, the idleness that (fictionally, of course) characterized the earliest days of the Dutch settlement in New York. The oldfashioned Rip will not conform to the bustling politicocommercial ideology of the village after his Big Sleep.
When asked to characterize Rip, the image that irrepressibly springs to mind is that of a longbearded, potbellied, idleloving semiimpoverished elderly Hippie. His greatest virtue is idleness, as I have said, marked by a kind of carefree attitude which is the ramification of democratic principles. But we wonder whether this easygoing disposition does not in turn border on sheer negligence: negligence of community, wife, children, etc. Much is made of Rip's termagant wife, but there is undoubtedly something to be said in her defense. The narrator reports that Lady Van Winkle chastises him several times for neglecting their farm and property. Perhaps Rip deserves to be henpecked? Perhaps there is a darker secret to his neglect than we are willing to consider, which is brushed over by the bemused narrator. Rip is an eternal boy in that he has no consciousness of responsibility, whether to community or family. I fail to see how he is an American type.
The story of cultural changes at work in the tale have to do with the dramatic transformation brought about by the Revolutionary War. The preRevolutionary village is a far different social order than the one Rip returns to, a contrast between preindustrial/agrarian/easypaced/parochial life and (beginnings of) industrial/postagrarian/fastpaced/national life or ideology. The shock of cultural changes is so overwhelming that Rip initially fails to recognize his own transformed village.
The other story at work is the one of technological progress, which has so much relevance to us in 1994. Ten years ago the idea of a Networked writing environment (what we are using) was nonexistent, or at least on the blackboards. The rate of technological development has been phenomenal in our age, but it is nothing new. Even writers as early as Irving were conscious of the mutations of time and what this meant in terms of culture.
This is what seems to me to be the "truth" of this truthful fantasy. Rip returns to his world to find it changed, and is fortunate enough to be accepted as something of a bardic figure in the community, a relic of the past, an animate antique. But the dour truth is that if one does not adapt to change, he is doomed to remain a product of the past. What is not uttered about Rip is nevertheless what I suspect, that he is an old ignorant fool incapable of seeing anything beyond his own limited keen. You will forgive me, dear Irving, for I know you meant "Rip Van Winkle" as a comic tale; but it is difficult to accept your fiction at face value. {Keith Cavedo}
Geoffrey Crayon appears
to be a reluctant citizen of America, more impressed with the European
citizen. His approach becomes self-deprecating or humble in his introduction.
He is relating a tale from another persona, Diedrich Knickerbocker, who
is honest in his descriptions, Crayon, relates to us. Crayon is the personna
Irving uses to describe himself, it would appear. Irving appears more like
the persona of this Crayon relating an early American legend.
Rip Van Winkle: The epigraph
tries to attest to the credibility of the tale which he takes up again
in the postscript. Rip is in the middle of a crisis, he can not take his
wife anymore. Rip is the lazy American, he takes nothing seriousy, not
his work, his family, or his wife. He tries to be idle with "the boys"
outside the local tavern, but is denied this idleness as well. He is the
eternal boy because he has no responsibilities, he is an American type
as defined by his geography and community. The isolated settler subject
to idleness and drink. Rip comes back into a new time where he is now free,
without a wife, and at an age where idleness is expected. The sorts of
truths in this story relate to men and women's relations, a midlife crisis,
and the nature of man. {Wynn Yarbrough}
In his poem "To a Waterfowl," Bryant expresses a strong Deistic view that there is a plan, a scheme, to life. There is a force behind Nature which guides the flight of the waterfowl and it also guides the destiny of mankind. In "Thanatopsis," the message seems to be "Death waits for us all." Once you're dead, that's it. Because of that belief, he encourages living life purposefully so that once you're gone, you'll have no regrets. Death is beautiful, mysterious, an enigma. Death is the great equalizer. Nature decorates the resting place of humanity. In "Inscription...," Bryant urges one to go out into Nature when one has had enough of life's misery. It is a very Romantic view. Nature can lift your worries; it's the great healer. {Laura}
Bryant's nature is one that God created and left for us. I think that what he is saying is that God created in us a sense of free will, rationality, and intuition of what we are "There is a Power whose care\ Teaches thy way along that pathless coast\ The desert and illimitable air\ Lone wandering, but not lost." (1017). We have an imprint of what our destiny is, a sense of our roles as humans, as animals. It does seem to be transcendental, or at least pretranscendental. In "Inscription" he writes about original sin. He claims that even though "God hath yoked to guilt\ Her pale tormentor" nature is still a place where we can escape to, in order to get away from the evils of civilization. Nature is a wild place, but a place to be marvelled at and studied emotionally. It is the other side of man's rationality. He describes natural things as having "wantonness of spirit", "deep contentment", "enjoy[ment of] Existence", "fixed tranquility", and so on. {Patrick}