Rip Van Winkle

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1819

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Character Analysis

Rip Van Winkle

The protagonist of the story, Rip Van Winkle is a generous and good-natured man but is also lazy and irresponsible. He shows no interest in the military or in the political exploits of his illustrious ancestors, the Van Winkles, but instead falls back on being a beloved, happy-go-lucky sort in his village. Rip represents a dreamy escapist fantasy, an alternative to American frontier culture and to a society driven by capitalism. Rip is both figuratively, and then quite literally, a figure of bygone days, and a nostalgic reminder of simpler times.

With the character of Rip, Irving created a new model for the American hero. Even though Rip is profoundly unheroic, he undergoes the traditional hero’s journey: He leaves his world by venturing up into the mystical Catskills, encounters a mystical source of power in Henry Hudson and the crew of the Half Moon, and on his return from the otherworld, finds his own world much different than before. Nevertheless, unlike outsized and superpowered legends like Paul Bunyan or Davy Crockett, Rip is an everyday person with a nagging wife who avoids his domestic duties and doesn’t care about patriotism and politics.

This character has had a resounding impact on American culture, which features many fictional characters in the Rip mold: goofy but useless fathers with annoying wives, rarely present for their children or for their country. However, Rip is more nuanced than this caricature: We criticize his laziness and his lack of growth even as we envy his lifestyle. He is both a dreamy love letter to the American way of life and a gentle criticism of it.

Dame Van Winkle

A one-dimensional character who has so little individuality that we never even learn her first name, Dame van Winkle follows a long literary tradition of the nagging, emasculating wife—a casually misogynist portrayal common during Irving’s time. In keeping with the story’s lighthearted tone, Dame Van Winkle is a cartoonish figure worthy of opprobrium for her “termagant” ways even though her motivations are completely benign: She simply wants Rip to be a productive member of society. Irving does complicate Dame Van Winkle somewhat by making a point of emphasizing that she keeps the house well—the preeminent duty of a woman in this period.

Hendrick Hudson

Henry “Hendrick” Hudson was a real British sea captain and explorer of the New World. Active during the early 17th century, he spent most of his career seeking profitable trade routes for the Dutch East India Company. Most significantly for the Winkle tale, he explored and named the Hudson River Valley, where Rip’s village is situated. Hudson’s seafaring career was cut short, however, by a mutiny from his crew in the spring of 1611. Hudson and a small contingent of loyal men were set adrift in Hudson’s Bay, never to be seen again.

In “Rip Van Winkle,” Hudson plays an ahistorical role, and Irving transmutes him into a fully mythological figure. While Hudson and his crew are dressed as they were in life, Irving also gives them attributes of Old World creatures and kings. With their long beards and exaggerated facial features, the men resemble dwarves or gnomes more than human beings. Nevertheless, their ominously grave demeanor recalls their harsh history: The mutiny of Hudson’s crew echoes the “mutiny” of the colonies against Great Britain.

Diedrich Knickerbocker

A notoriously unreliable character who also appears in Irving’s other works, Diedrich is a fictional historian whose papers contain the story of Rip Van Winkle. Like many of Irving’s names, Knickerbocker’s name is intentionally comical, but it also references a real clan of Dutch colonists.

In Irving’s earlier works, Diedrich served as a vehicle to satirize the materialistic, empirical nature of American society. He plays a similar role in “Rip Van Winkle”: He is less interested in the facts and instead relies on dubious first-person accounts, interesting stories, and folklore. As such, Knickerbocker is revered by the locals, but distrusted by academics, who are unable to verify his sources. Because Irving previously used the name as a pseudonym in his first major book, a satirical history called A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), there is a hint of Irving in the Knickerbocker character. The author is happy to poke fun at himself as someone whose works may not amount to much, but who is treasured and revered by those who love his fictions.