Transcript Rip Van Winkle”

“Rip Van Winkle”
Notes
•A motif: a recurring
subject, theme, idea,
feature, etc. in a literary
work
•In “RVW,” there is a
motif of Vision vs.
Reality
(there’s a contrast between the two)
Vision vs. Reality
•Vision = what appears to be
vs.
•Reality = what is
Vision vs. Reality
• “Rip Van Winkle” is the classic American
story of a man who finds his home life
intolerable, and so escapes into a world of
fantasy and vision.
• The mountains are Rip’s escape from the
real world and all its problems.
Rip’s Everyday-Life: The Village
• lies “at the foot of the fairy mountains” (247)
• “a little village, of great antiquity” (248)
• “There were some of the houses…built of
small yellow bricks…having latticed windows
and gable fronts, surmounted with
weathercocks”(248).
• “His fences were continuously falling to
pieces; his cow would go astray or get among
the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow
quicker in his fields than anywhere
else…(249).
Rip’s Escape: The mountains
• “fairy” mountains (247)
• “Every change of season, every change of
weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces
some change in the magical hues and shapes of
these mountains…When the weather is fair and
settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and
print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky;
but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape
is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray
vapors about their summits, which, in the last
rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like
a crown of glory”(247).
Vision vs. Reality
• Even before Rip goes into the
mountains and apparently falls
asleep for 20 years, the story is
divided between reality and
fantasy/vision.
Vision vs. Reality
• Reality: Home life, under the rule of Dame
Van Winkle
• Farm: “most pestilent piece of ground in
the whole country” (249)
• Children: “ragged and wild as if they
belonged to nobody” (249)
• Wife: “continually dinning in his ears
about his idleness, his carelessness, and
the ruin he was bringing on his family”
(250)
Vision vs. Reality
• Vision: Community anywhere outside
the house
• Playing with village children/telling stories (249)
• Minding “any body’s business but his own”; “an
insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable
labour” (249)
• “frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages,
philosophers, and other idle personages of the
village” (250)
• Escaping into the woods with gun and dog Wolf
(251)
Personification in
“Rip Van Winkle”
• The following descriptions are used to describe
the Catskill Mountains, near which the story takes
place:
• “They are a branch of the great Appalachian
family, and are seen to the west of the river…”
(247).
• “When the weather is fair and settled, they are
clothed in blue and purple…” (247).
• “…but sometimes, when the rest of the
landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood
of gray vapors about their summits…” (247).
•In all of these
descriptions, the
mountains are given
human-like qualities.