Question

How does Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” reflect popular themes of the romantic era? Cite evidence from the story to support your response.

Answer 1

Answer:

Irving story mainly depicts that time keeps changing whether one person is there or not.

Explanation:

"Rip Van Winkle" by “Washington Irving” is written in the Romantic Movement in America. The novel portrays romanticism by featuring three key elements in the story. It mentions supernatural elements, the nature’s beauty and individual’s uniqueness. The nature’s beauty is shown in the beautiful mountains in Winkle’s town.

Rip Van Winkle is described as a pleasant man and is also a henpecked husband. He takes a 20-year nap and sees that the world doesn’t stop and keeps changing around him. He meets different people in his sleep and when he gets up the world is entirely different. “Freedom” is also one of the themes of the story. Rip gets freedom from his wife as when he wakes up after 20-year nap, she had died.  

Answer 2

Answer: Use your own words and make the answer below your own.

Explanation:

In "Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving gives an extensive description of the mountains. As consistent with themes of nature in romantic literature, the mountains are described with a tone of admiration:

“From an opening...he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland.  He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.”

Another theme consistent with the romantic era is the emphasis on imagination and the supernatural. Rip realizes that he has been asleep for 20 years:  

“With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs.”

“As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he new, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed.”

The romantics were fascinated by the supernatural and by nature. He draws connections between the mountains and the Rip’s story of falling asleep for 20 years.