Rip Van Winkle is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819. It follows a man in colonial American named Rip Van Winkle who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up twenty years later, having missed the American Revolution. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it is part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills.”

Rip represents America in the allegory. He's lazy and doesn't listen to his wife. He does what he wants. He's not educated and spends his free time gossiping with his friends and getting drunk. He spends much