Atkinson 1
Steven Atkinson
Brother Bird
English 334
March 26, 2010
Where Is America Heading? : Irving’s Satire and Elegy in “Rip Van Winkle”
The earliest period of the United States was a time of great optimism, as well as a
time for frightened skepticism. Americans knew that the country had broken off from
the old world to become a land of its own. The question was whether or not it was
feasible to believe that a land lacking an established culture rounded and shaped by the
currents of history could succeed. Much of the literature of this time period is
exceptional, for America was search for its own identity, its own principles, its own arts,
and its own traditions. Some of the writers of this epoch express a profound optimism
with high hopes for reform and a prosperous future; others express with dire warnings
and admonitions the pitfalls history attests. Washington Irving wrote during this time,
becoming one of the first writers to be undeniably American. His works are intricately
related to the history of America, establishing a foundation of substance for the new
country. At face value, his works present an innocent and respectable upbringing for
the new nation, but when analyzed more closely, they contain two recognizable literary
constructions satire and elegy that communicate some of his doubts about the future of
our country. Irving’s writing style places him among the early writers wondering
whether the country’s destiny was greatness or if its doom was ignominy. In “Rip Van
Atkinson 2
Winkle,” Irving’s use of satire and elegy convey his ruminations over the destiny of the
United States and his consideration of the question: Where is America heading?
Analyzing the devices of satire and elegy, Irving question becomes apparent in the
writing style of Irving’s narrators, character attributes of Rip, and Rip’s final return to
the village.
Washington Irving’s writing style is unique specifically in his use of different
pseudonyms, each accompanied by a distinct personality, point of view, and literary
style; nevertheless certain characteristics of his style are constant, namely elegy and
satire. For example, the overall writer of The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, the
larger work in which contains many of Irving’s most popular tales, the most common
narrator and the implied author is Geoffrey Crayon. However the implied author of
“Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Moreover, Irving used the Geoffrey Crayon persona to “affirm the emotional and
psychological value of storytelling,” and furthermore, “as a dupe of his own desires”
(Rubin-Dorsky “The Value of Storytelling” 394), meaning that a this technique of
narrative allowed Irving to look at the story through different eyes, thereby letting less
of his own views and emotions leak out onto the pages. “It is this sense of “separation”
that provides a measure of ease and comfort for Irving by releasing him from the
anxiety of failed expectations” (Rubin Dorsky “The Value of Storytelling” 394), failed
expectations such as the one encountered in Geoffrey’s account of looking for the Boar’s
Head Inn on a journey to England, when after searching a great deal he finds nothing
(Rubin-Dorsky “The Value of Storytelling” 397). “Anxiety” in this citation refers to the
Atkinson 3
fear “that his writings will partake in the fluctuations of his own feelings” (RubinDorsky “Genesis of the Fictional Sketch” 231). These elements suggest an elegiac
attitude in Geoffrey Crayon and Washington Irving.
The second constant element in Irving and his narrators is the satiric or ironic
element. Jeffery Rubin-Dorsky describes Geoffrey Crayon as “a humorous, sometimes
mildly ridiculous figure” (“The Value of Storytelling” 394), meaning he was almost
comically elegiac. Diedrich Knickerbocker’s persona has an even more definite satiric
method: “Knickbocker’s grandiloquence… was offered not to illicit caution but
laughter. Hidden behind the old historian’s bombastic descriptions and pedantic
pretentions was Washington Irving, who exploited Knickerbocker’s persona to display
his satiric wit and his narrative skills” (Williams 265). The genius of using Irving’s
particular narrative technique was that he could use different tones and moods, like the
depressed traveler or lofty historian, to enhance the comedy and elegy of his writing.
The grandiloquent descriptions in the story, present from the very beginning,
suggest a mood of elegy or poetic reflection, which satirizes the historical and cultural
aspirations of America. In the opening line of “Rip Van Winkle,” the Knickerbocker
narrator establishes his definitive hyperbolic style, reflecting irony on Irving’s part. He
uses elevated language and hyperbolic historical allusions: “figured so gallantly in the
chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of fort
Christina” (Irving 428). This statement bears a special relationship to both elegy and
satire, for the tone of the narrator is obviously elegiac, reminiscing in the chivalrous
days gone by. However, the statement is essentially satiric as explain by Steven
Atkinson 4
Blakemore when he wrote, “Irving hence plays an ironic trick on the reader ignorant of
his History [of New York], where the siege of Fort Christina figure prominently, and
where… Rip’s glorious ancestors are introduced: “the Van Winkles of Haerlem, potent
suckers of eggs, and noted for running of horses and running up scores at taverns””
(189). This allusion, as well as other literary devices that Knickerbocker employs, are all
essentially satiric in nature enumerating aspects of America’s history in hyperbolic
terms. The ironic overstatement shows part of America’s deep desire to “elicit
confidence within and without by assuming an immediate adulthood in the family of
nations” (Martin 137), with history of its own, a desire equally shared by Washington
Irving in his very serious elegiac longing for the Old World with its “refinements of
highly cultivated society” and “quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom” (qtd.
Rubin-Dorsky “The Value of Storytelling” 395).
The character of Rip Van Winkle is another important aspect of the story
showing him as the quintessential colonial living his life innocently, a satiric view of
what America was. He is friendly to children, dogs, and neighbors and is a general
favorite in the village for always lending a helpful hand. He is also appreciative of
nature as a refuge from his wife, mainly. However, his one fault is negligence in his
own home. Steven Blackmore symbolically applied Rip’s relationship with his wife to
the colonial relationship between Britain and America first citing the typical example of
American/ British metaphor, “England was the “mother” or “parent” country, and the
American colonists were her children.” Then contrasting the metaphor with that of “Rip
Van Winkle: “But there is another pertinent metaphor, for Rip is a hen-pecked husband,
Atkinson 5
badgered by a demanding wife, and soon finds himself separated from his family”
(189). Irving presents this alteration of the metaphor in hindsight, for the Revolution
was long over before the time when the story took place. Hindsight opens eyes to the
possibility of other conceivable historical relationships. America, during the
Revolution, may have appeared to be a group of unruly children, but longer after the
Revolution the country appeared more like a man who had lost his family ties,
allusively meaning the historical and cultural heritage. Instead of a prolonged feud
between Rip and Dame Van Winkle, signifying the revolution, Rip, growing
increasingly uncomfortable with the situation at home, found himself a beneficiary of
circumstance, jumping ahead into the idleness of old age that he had been preparing for
since he left boyhood.
This image of a bickering couple is also a satirical remark for the relations
between America and Britain during the period when Irving wrote The Sketchbook.
During this period Irving remarked that he felt a growing “literary animosity” between
the United States and Great Britain (Chandler 90). The literature on both sides became
particularly vehement. The Rip and Dame Van Winkle conflict is possible a satire of
current these current events of Irving’s lifetime.
As the symbolic figure of America, Rip is satirical because he is a lay about who
does not bear up well under the pressures of family and responsibility. Despite this, he
is still a character of the world or the village and family where he came from. Ironically,
he lives in world with difficult conditions, but it is where he has his true, distinct
purpose and identity. After waking from his sleep he is in a world without the
Atkinson 6
problems of his life, but in which he no longer belongs. He is similar to America at the
time period, relatively free from the tyranny of the monarch, but still culturally part of
the same world as the monarch.
Rip, however, is not an elegiac figure, before his experience in the mountains.
He does not ruminate or think of how things were better in the past, although he has
reason. He is constantly living in the present. The narrator despite all of his elevated
allusions and historical outlooks make no mention of Rip sharing these characteristics.
This is also a comment on America as a whole. Irving felt a deep connection with his
past and history, in his writing it is apparent that “[He] nurtured a sense of
dispossession from an English heritage, which became in his writing a poetic and
poignant loss” (Murray 212). Rip Van Winkle does not feel a “sense of dispossession”
until after his hibernation. Much like America, not until after the Revolution, did
people, like Irving, realize how much of their history and identity had previously
extended from England, and it could no longer do so.
The major shift in the powers of satire and elegy occurs when Rip returns to the
village. The elegy becomes real instead of burlesque excerpts from Knickerbocker’s
prose. Rip Van Winkle returns to his home town a hungry wanderer. Robert A.
Ferguson postulates that the hibernation never happened and that Rip, “forced out of
town to beg for his bread and perhaps to die of hunger and exposure, this unfortunate
adaptation of Rip paints him as a decidedly uncomic figure” (531). He does not realize
that he is suddenly older, possibly a play on America’s “self-conscious adulthood”
(Martin 137), and as he penetrates ever deeper into the village he once called home, he
Atkinson 7
finds things startlingly different. The dog he takes to be his does not recognize him, he
bemoans saying, “my very dog… has forgotten me!” (Irving 435). The sight of his
desolate house “overcame all his connubial fears--he called for his wife and children”
(Irving 435). In the town, he asks, “Where’s Nicolaus Vedder?”, “Where’s Brom
Dutcher?”, and “Where’s Van Bummel the School master?” only to find that they have
all gone (Irving 437). His image of an old man, exiled, hungry, and dirty, along with is
mock ubi sunt, provoke strong relations with the old Germanic elegy, reflecting a man
and by extent a country adrift on a sea of uncertainty. Ultimately, when he saw he son,
the spitting image of himself, “the poor fellow was completely… confounded. He
doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man” (Irving 438).
Rip’s identity crisis was startlingly comparable with the identity crisis of the newly
formed United States. Rip found solace in his family in the end though, spared of the
ignominy of identity loss. The conclusion is that America found a happier existence
that before, as well.
Washington Irving was truly a remarkable writer, to coin the expression he is an
“ironic sentimentalist or sentimental ironist” (Eberwein 155). As one of the first
American Romantic writers, he was a forerunner for others that would follow,
establishing theme in history, identity, culture, and tradition, which later writers, both
American and even British would utilize, and furthermore, he was one of the first to
contemplate the questions that would constantly be part of American Literature: What
is American identity? Where is America heading? What is America’s ultimate destiny?
Using his interesting and thought provoking devices, like satire, he demonstrated the
Atkinson 8
historical and cultural deficiencies that he noted in the new nation, and in a way, he
promoted the establishment of an American cultural identity through his literature.
Carrying the Old World into the new world, he helped establish major American
Literary traditions that later authors would explore into the very depths.
Atkinson 9
Works Cited
Blakemore, Steven. “Family Resemblances: The Texts and Contexts of “Rip Van
Winkle.” Early American Literature. 35.2 (2000): 187-212. JSTOR. Web. 26 March
2010.
Chandler, James. “Concerning the Influence of America on the Mind: Western
Settlements, “English Writers,” and the Case of US Culture.” American Literary
History 10.1 (1998): 84-123. JSTOR. Web. 29 March 2010.
Eberwein, Jane D. “Transatlantic Contrasts in Irving’s Sketch Book.” College Literature
15.2 (1988): 153-170. JSTOR. Web. 26 March 2010
Ferguson, Robert A. “Rip Van Winkle and the Generation Divide in American
Literature.” Early American Literature 40.3 (2005): 529-544. JSTOR. Web. 27 March
2010.
Irving, Washington. “Rip Van Winkle.” American Literature. 'Ed'. William E.
Cain. Vol. 1. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2004. 426-442. Print.
Martin, Terence. “Rip, Ichabod, and the American Imagination.” American Literature
31.2 (1959): 137-149. JSTOR. Web. 29 March 2010.
Murray, Laura J. “Aesthetics of Dispossession: Washington Irving and Ideologies of
(De) Colonization in the Early Republic.” American Literary History 8.2 (1996):
205-231. JSTOR. Web. 26 March 2010.
Rubin-Dorsky, Jeffrey. “The Value of Storytelling: “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow” in the Context of The Sketch Book.” Modern Philology 82.4
(1985): 393-406. JSTOR. Web. 2 February 2010.
Rubin-Dorsky, Jeffrey. “Washington Irving and the Genesis of the Fictional Sketch.”
Early American Literature 21.3 (1986): 226-247. JSTOR. Web. 29 March 2010.
Williams, Daniel E. “Authoring the Author: Heroes and Geeks.” Early American
Literature 30.3 (1995): 264-274. JSTOR. Web. 29 March 2010.