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Washington Irving's Struggle In Rip Van Winkle

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In Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle,” the main character Rip Van Winkle is spending his days merrily ignorant of any real work and issues. He tends to the needs of the children and wives of his village instead of his own family as he seemed to have “...an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor” (pg. 620). This carefree attitude caused problems with his marriage, and his wife, Dame Van Winkle, would often chastise him or kick him out of the house. It is with these thoughts that Rip begins to make his way home early one night, only to be stopped by a “short, square built fellow” (pg. 630) calling his name. The decision to help the man led Rip to an abandoned amphitheater where he soon literally began to drink himself into a coma. Upon his awakening and accepting that his world had been changed forever, Rip goes right back to the man he was before, compiling “with his usual alacrity” (pg. 631). Irving’s central idea is that even a drastic change in one’s situation may not have any affect on one’s life. Main character Rip is many things: lazy, kind, a heavy drinker, and also unchanging. He is unchanging throughout his entire adult life, making him both flat and static as a …show more content…

The advantages of this certain point of view is that a mysterious unnamed narrator seemed to have “observed” (pg. 627) Rip’s entire ordeal and is retelling the story to the reader. Using third person limited also focuses the plot onto the main character instead of having useless information from the minor characters: knowing what the mountain men thought would not help move the story along as much as the narrator did. However since the story is so focused, the the narrator’s opinions overshadow most of the narration, which could have differed from Rip’s view of himself

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