A View on the Rip Van Winkle Emphasis on the Escapism

Rip Van Winkle emphasizes nature, times past, the power of imagination, enchantment, and values individual feelings and intuition over reason, to focus on the idea of Romanticism, which is the time period the story was published in. American Romanticism can best be described as a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thought, and towards the integrity of nature and the freedom of the imagination. Written by Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" is a story about escape from civilization and responsibility.

Rip lives at the foot of New York's "Kaatskill" Mountains and is well-loved by the townspeople, especially the children. However, he tends to avoid the handful of daily labor required of him by his constantly nagging wife, Dame Van Winkle, and often resorts to the wilderness as his outlet away from all the work and stress. American Romanticism champions individual freedom through nature.

One day, while wandering up the mountains, he encounters a man dressed in old-fashioned Dutch clothing. The two venture up to an amphitheater where he finds a group of men dressed in a similarly outlandish fashion to the man he first bumped into, playing nine-pins. Later on, he learns that the men he met are the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew. One of American Romanticism's features is to find inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture. Irving based "Rip Van Winkle" on this famous American folklore.

Every twenty years, the spirits of Henry Hudson and his crew return to the Catskill Mountains to play nine-pins with the gnomes and to look out over the country they had first explored together on the Half Moon. Anyone who drinks the magic liquor will remain in slumber from the day they depart to the day they, once again, return, which is twenty years later. Rip was asleep for twenty years. This demonstrates another Romanticism quality - stressing the supernatural realm and the inner world of the imagination.

When he wakes, Rip returns to his village and doesn't recognize anyone. He also finds his house empty and comes across another man named Rip Van Winkle. He quickly gets in trouble when he claims himself as a loyalist to King George III. He learns that a war (the American Revolution) had taken place. They were no longer a colony; instead, they were a brooding new country, the United States, under the governance of General George Washington. His friends had either died in the war or gone elsewhere. The other Rip Van Winkle is his son, who is now grown. Irving uses another element of Romanticism - he looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress. Many wished they had the luxury to sleep through the hardships of the war. Rip's awakening is also seen as significant to the awakening of the new American nation. Rip's emancipation from his wife is like America's emancipation from Great Britain.

Washington Irving used various characteristics of American Romanticism to write "Rip Van Winkle". To the Romantic, imagination, powerful emotion, wild nature, and exploration were of greater value than planning, reason, and logic. Irving used misty mountaintops, mysterious forests, an old-fashioned village, a distant era, magic, and enchantment to achieve all the elements of Romanticism.

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