Rip Van Winkle Analysis
“Rip Van Winkle” setting of the tale, in the Catskills by the
Hudson, gives the story a fairly precise location that grounds it
in America.
The narrator is Diedrich Knickerbocker, who is quite adamant in
vouching for the authenticity of the tale, which serves not to
satisfy the reader but instead to make the reliability of the tale
and its narrator even more ambiguous.
The story itself is an escapist fantasy; Rip Van Winkle is an
ineffectual male hero who cannot support his farm or family.
Instead of facing the consequences of his idleness and facing his
wife, who certainly makes the problem worse instead of better,
he sleeps for twenty years. Finally, he is of such an age that his
idleness is excusable and allowed. This makes him an
antithesis to the American dream. He has no ambition, he
does not work hard for himself, and he does not rise above
where he began. He just likes to chat and have friends.
He also sleeps through what was the defining moment of
American history, and upon waking, he does not even care. This
develops him as the American anti-hero, for he takes no part in
the country’s founding or history. The story shows that great
historical events are often less important than the daily
happenings in an individual’s life. The only oppressor Rip Van
Winkle cares about having overcome is his wife.
Dame Van Winkle is certainly the antagonist in this story. She is
constantly berating Rip Van Winkle, whom everyone else in the
neighborhood adores. She is a completely flat character—we
only ever see her worst side, except for the one comment made
after she has died that she always kept the house in good order.
Her criticism of her husband, if far too strong, is nevertheless
deserved. He has completely failed in his role as husband,
father, and breadwinner, leaving his family in near ruin. The
husband is an extreme form of deadbeat and the wife an extreme
form of nagging and henpecking, a state of affairs which appears
to be a lesson and warning for Irving’s male and female readers
alike. The husbands should learn to be more industrious and
attentive, and the wives should learn to be less antagonistic
and more understanding lest they drive their husbands further
away.
Rip’s night in the woods symbolizes the fantasy of escape
through one’s imagination, which is in itself a form of
storytelling. Once he is freed of his duties to his family, he
becomes the town storyteller, and it is this story which has freed
him from his domestic duties—he literally and figuratively
dreamed them away. In this way the imagination, or one’s
creative life, is presented as a way to deal with the less pleasing
duties of everyday life. At the same time, it is not without its
dangers. Although Van Winkle finds a happy ending, he is very
close to being labeled insane or dangerous and being thrust out
of the town.