Good Ol' Rip Van Winkle

After reading Rip Van Winkle, I was surprised I had not heard the story before. I had heard the name somewhere, in passing during something, but never received all the details. So after reading the story by Diedrich Knickerbocker, I feel like I know what all the jokes are about.

In the beginning of the story when it is describing Rip as someone who has an "aversion to all kinds of profitable labour", I assumed it would be a tale about how he turns from his ways and becomes a hard worker. I even feel like it is a little bit set up to do that, because we he wakes up in the woods and finds he has slept for twenty years I thought that he would either turn from his old ways, or be able to go back in time and make amends for his past errors. I thought it would be more like A Christmas Carol where he gets to see what damage he has done and rectify it. Instead he just gets to carry out the remainder of his life with his daughter and grandson, without the "tart temper" and "sharp tongue" of his wife. I did not see anything to be gained from this story, other than that men with nagging wives probably began to pray this would happen to them. In fact, it basically rewarded Rip for his hiding and cowardly behavior by getting him out of trouble with his wife. It just seems unfair, but maybe men of this era needed a story like this to read and escape with. That is especially shown in the last line of the short story, "when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon".

On the other side of the argument, this story could also come off as a cautionary tale to those idle workers. Men are taught to be the breadwinners and hard workers, and because Rip was neither, he gets to miss twenty years of his life. It demonstrates how negatively those men are portrayed in society and how this is definitely not a proper way to live. He even misses most of life of his children. His house is shown to be in ruins at the end, along with everything else he ever knew. The ending author's note even goes on to say how true this story is, although it's clearly not, and that makes it even more of a cautionary tale.

It did however seem that someone took great notice of this story which took place in New York, because they made a statue of him. I just thought that was a funny little fact and even funnier statue!

Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette!

    
 
  Benjamin Franklin’s newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, was quite an interesting read. I read the six hundred and eighty second issue, printed on January 6, 1941. The headlining story was about the war going on between Bulvaria and Hungary, but it did not feel like a regular article. Instead the article felt like I was reading from a history textbook, where it was giving me a play by play of past events. It did not seem like breaking news that we have today, which gives us every little detail they can squeeze out daily of important events. I do understand that news from across the ocean was difficult to receive in a timely manner back then, but I felt like it could have come across a little less text-booky. Sometimes it did not even seem like he was writing in complete sentences, so it was extremely tough to get through it all.
    On the topic of complete sentences, nothing else in this paper had complete sentences. There was a headline titled “Books Sold” and it was literally just a list of all the books sold in Philadelphia. Maybe that is how the New York Best Sellers List began or rooted from. Although this was just a general list and not even showing data of how many copies were sold, but then again those kinds of numbers probably did not matter much back in Franklin’s day.
    The most confusing article in this paper was one entitled “John Barkley, At the sign of the Bible, in Second-Street, Philadelphia, intends in two Months time, to take his Paffage for Old England, and has juft imported from London, and lately from Glafgow, fuch Goods as follows,”. I did not understand until the end that this was whole huge behemoth of an article was just advertising a sort of garage sale. It seemed like every other piece in here resembled it in some way, in that items, characteristics, and other random things were just listed. The gazette felt like a place for people to put out want advertisements or lists of things, instead of bringing news to the masses.

Mary Rowlandson's Incredibly True Story

Mary Rowlandson

         Mary Rowlandson’s story of captivity among the Native American’s is a really interesting story, because it gives us a first hand look into how Native American’s lived at the time. Although it is quite a skewed perspective since it is told through a hostage’s point of view, it is still a valuable piece of literature. Especially to see how resourceful the Native Americans were. She noted how the English burned all their corn crops, thinking that would starve them for good, even burning all their extra supplies. Quickly she saw they would eat many things on the ground, like nuts, acorns, and artichokes. Although that does not seem strange to us now, the things that were obscure were how they would eat horses’ guts and ears, beavers, squirrels, dogs, and even barks of trees. These were a people who were determined to survive no matter what.
       I found that when I first started reading the text, I was a little annoyed with Mary Rowlandson. I knew the terrible things to come to the Native American people, so I sort of thought some of these English people were getting their due justice by the Indians. But the fact that in the midst of everything, she kept praising God and seeing his divine plan was remarkable to me. I expected her retelling to be a complete complaint of how barbaric the Indians were, but she seemed to be more concerned with showing how God was working with her and the people the entire time she was a captive. The most notable quote I found was on the top of page 127 which says, “they made use of their tyrannical power whilst they had it; but through the Lord’s wonderful mercy, their time was now short”. She shines the Indians in a negative light, while uplifting God at the same time.
      I know in class when we talked about the poems where all the strife was occurring and Anne was able to have faith through it all, we all struggled to think she really could see the light in the continuing storms. Mary Rowlandson is the proof these people were not just saying what they were taught to, but living a life for their religion. One of her concluding thoughts in her memoir were “if smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled?”. She knows she survived something awful and only has God to thank for that. I do not think many other survivors would have the same mindset. It really resonated with me and made me sad to think I have complained at much more trivial of matters.