Rip Van Winkle

“Rip Van Winkle” is a tale, a genre of 19th century short fiction resembling a parable or a sketch and typically combining elements of realism and fantasy. However, Irving also interpolates an Old World fairy tale trope into his take on this genre. The conceit is familiar: An enchanted sleeper visits with supernatural beings and returns to a changed world. But Rip ventures not into a Germanic fairytale forest, but a distinctly American setting—the Appalachian Mountains; the supernatural beings Rip finds there are not fairies or gnomes or trolls, but the real-life explorer Henry Hudson and his crew. Irving creates a “historical myth” around a homegrown American hero. Nevertheless, Irving imbues the landscape of the Catskills with the sort of sleepy, magical qualities of European fairy tale forests. The mountains “change in magical hues” and their “hood of grey vapours” glows in the setting sun.

Irving envelops his folktale in real world historical narrative. The story’s framing narrative is that Geoffrey Crayon has found Rip’s story in the papers of a less than rigorous researcher—the deceased Diedrich Knickerbocker, a custodian of colonial Dutch history doubted by experts, but loved by locals. Knickerbocker’s work comprises the story’s second framing device, an academic argument for the truth of the tale. These overlaid framing narratives, a common feature of the genre, offer a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor: Myth is by nature not “true,” so how “true” could this story be, passed down to us through not one, not two, but three unreliable narrators (Rip, then Crayon, and then Knickerbocker)?

The story opens with a dry account of Rip’s life, in keeping with Knickerbocker’s ostensibly scholarly historiography. In an already lazy village, Rip takes laziness to a new extreme, allowing his farm to fall into disrepair, refusing to provide for his wife and children, and whiling away the hours drinking at the local tavern. Though adult responsibilities and societal expectations certainly exist in his world, Rip has removed himself from them.

The moment Rip enters the woods, the story shifts from historical account to another nonfiction genre, the frontiersman travelogue, as Rip hikes through pristine tracts of untouched nature. In his explorer guise, Rip meets a mysterious supernatural figure who turns out to be the explorer of the surrounding area: Henry Hudson and his crew, an Americanized version of the seductive and aspirational beings in European folklore.

Rip’s 20-year sleep represents a moment of crisis for the man and a nation. Plucked from time and unwillingly removed from society, Rip becomes a stranger to both the past and the future. At first, when he wakes, Rip only notices strange physical differences—his own stiff joints, his rusted gun, his missing dog. Later, he will be more upset noticing the societal changes: languor has given way to an obsession with politics and capitalistic gain. The huge upheavals in Rip’s family—the maturation and marriage of his children, the death of Dame Van Winkle—symbolize the seismic shifts of colonial society in leaving its parent, the British monarchy, to achieving maturation as nation state.

Still, although everything is different when Rip returns—his old friends replaced by busier, business-minded people; the lazy tavern now hosts political activity—nothing has really changed for Rip himself. His beard is longer and his body is old, but he quickly reintegrates into society and takes up the same position he enjoyed before: a dedicated gossiper and storyteller. In fact, Rip’s advanced age has only given him more excuse to shirk his work.

The ending’s resumption of the status quo plays on the division noted earlier between Knickerbocker’s academic detractors and ordinary folk appreciators. In this case, though the government has changed hands and the people at the top are intensely worried about the philosophy of statehood, has there really been appreciable change for the regular people?