Question

How does the story “Rip Van Winkle” unite the people of the time; how does it help them see themselves as distinct and unique?

Answer 1

The story, written by Washington Irving, told a story of a man that sought to flee from his ever-talking wife; he does so by going to the forest and sleeping away 20 years, after he drinks from the keg of the dwarf he helps. After waking up, he found that the America he knows is changed, the American Revolution having shaped the customs of the country (the portrait of King George at the bar he used to go have made way to the picture of George Washington).

Being written at the same year of the Panic (1819), the story was seen as analog to the feeling of unity and progress felt by the American people in the period after the Napoleonic Wars, that as it was with the Revolution, greatly changed the country.