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!