Imagination In Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Imagination is a mechanism of explanation for happenings that cannot seemingly be explained. Whenever a door creaks unexpectedly or a window rattles, a subliminal sense tells one that it might be the worst or an impossible force. The door might have been opened by a ghost, and a monster might have hit the window, even though someone just opened the door and shut the window to keep the wind from coming through. The mind has such an ego when it comes to imagination, that it usually trumps one’s senses. The Romantics, people from the time period 1800-1850, thought that the imagination was more valuable and reliable than reason, as just shown in this prior circumstance. One Romantic writer, Washington Irving, wrote a story called “ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which shows how imagination trumps reason. Imagination can be defined by many definitions and synonyms. Like Irving, I define imagination as, an explanation for the seemingly impossible. In Washington Irving’s, “ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the characters use their own imaginations to explain

They manner in which they can recite such petty details about a fictional person is astonishing. They can recall the Hessian Trooper’s death, sounds, apparel, and the battle he fought in, while most who believed in spirits of that sort would only identify it as a ghoul. Because of the townspeople’s imagination trumping their reason and seeking out an explanation for the howls they hear and the wind rushing past them besides the logical and apparent reasons ahead, they gave the premise for even more ingenuity to take place. Irving’s paragraph gives insight to his possible beliefs on imagination. As a romantic writer, Irving would have most likely thought of imagination as first to reason. Again in the beginning of the story, Irving’s characters use imagination as a means of explanation, but this time to influence of the