"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819. It follows a man in colonial America 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." The story's title character is a Dutch-American villager living around the time of the American Revolutionary War.
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Summary
"Rip Van Winkle" is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains, lives kindly Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch villager. Van Winkle enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness or hanging out at the inn with his friends. He is loved by all in the town, especially the children to whom he tells stories or for whom he repairs toys. However, he tends to shirk hard work, to his nagging wife's dismay, which has caused his home and farm to fall into disarray.
One autumn day, to escape his wife's nagging, Van Winkle wanders into the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name called out, Van Winkle sees a man wearing antiquated Dutch clothing; he is carrying a keg up the mountain and requires help. Together, the men and Wolf proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of thunderous noises: a group of ornately dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins.
Van Winkle does not ask who they are or how they know his name. Instead, he begins to drink some of their jenever and soon falls asleep.
When he awakens on the mountain, Van Winkle discovers shocking changes: his musket is rotting and rusty, his beard is a foot long, and his dog is nowhere to be found. He returns to his village, where he recognizes no one.
Van Winkle returns just after an election, and people are asking how he voted. Never having cast a ballot in his life, Van Winkle proclaims himself a faithful subject of King George III, unaware that the American Revolution has taken place, and nearly gets himself into trouble with the townspeople until one elderly woman recognizes him as the long-lost Rip Van Winkle.
King George's portrait on the inn's sign has been replaced with one of George Washington. Van Winkle learns that most of his friends were killed fighting in the American Revolution. He is also disturbed to find another man called Rip Van Winkle; it is his son, now grown up. Van Winkle also discovers that his wife died some time ago but is not saddened by the news.
Van Winkle learns that the men he met in the mountains are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew, which had vanished long ago, and that he has been away from the village for at least 20 years. His grown daughter takes him in. He resumes his usual idleness, and his strange tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, particularly by the children who say that whenever thunder is heard, the men in the mountains must be playing nine-pins. The henpecked husbands in the area often wish they could have a sip of Van Winkle's elixir to sleep through their own wives' nagging.
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Characters
Composition and publication history
After a failed business venture with his brothers, Irving filed for bankruptcy in 1818. Despondent, he turned to writing for possible financial support, although he had difficulty thinking of stories to write. He stayed in Birmingham, England with his brother-in-law Henry Van Wart. The two were reminiscing in June 1818 when Irving was suddenly inspired by their nostalgic conversation. Irving locked himself in his room and wrote non-stop all night. As he said, he felt like a man waking from a long sleep. He presented the first draft of "Rip Van Winkle" to the Van Wart family over breakfast.
"Rip Van Winkle" was one of the first stories Irving proposed for his new book, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Irving asked his brother Ebeneezer to assist with publication in the United States. As Irving wrote, "I shall feel very anxious to hear of the success of this first re-appearance on the literary stage - Should it be successful, I trust I shall be able henceforth to keep up an occasional fire." 2,000 copies of the first octavo-sized installment, which included "Rip Van Winkle", were released on June 23, 1819, in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, published by Cornelius S. Van Winkle, and sold at a somewhat expensive 75 cents. A British edition was published shortly afterward, by John Miller, who went out of business immediately thereafter. With help from his friend Walter Scott, Irving was able to convince John Murray to take over British publication of the Sketch Book.
Themes and literary forerunners
In the tenth chapter of his book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, the third-century AD Greek historian Diogenes Laertius relates the story of the legendary sage Epimenides of Knossos, who was said to have been a shepherd on the island of Krete. One day, Epimenides followed after a sheep that had wandered off and, after becoming tired, went into a cave under Mount Ida and fell asleep. When he awoke, he continued searching for the sheep, but could not find it, so he returned to his father's farm, only to discover that it was under new ownership. He went home, only to discover that the people there did not know him. Finally, he encountered his younger brother, who had become an old man, and learned that he had been asleep in the cave for fifty-seven years. According to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be 154, 157, or 299 years old. Multiple sources have identified the story of Epimenides as the earliest known variant of the "Rip Van Winkle" fairy tale.
In Christian tradition, there is a similar, well-known story of "The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", which recounts a group of early Christians who hid in a cave circa 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius. They fell into a miraculous sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, to discover that the city and the whole Empire had become Christian. This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a famous Sura of the Quran, Sura Al-Kahf. The version recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later.
The story of "Rip Van Winkle" itself is widely thought to have been based off Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal's German folktale "Peter Klaus", which is a shorter story set in a German village. It tells of a goatherd named Peter Klaus who goes looking for a lost goat. He finds some men drinking in the woods and, after drinking some of their wine, he falls asleep. When he wakes back up, twenty years have passed.
In many ways, the story is a classic European faerie tale of a man who is actually rewarded for helping the faeries move their barrel. They advance him to a time in life where he is free of his nagging wife and is now old enough for it be respectable for him to take it easy and play with children, working when he wants to instead of when he has to, supported by his loving, grown children. The theme of independence is also explored; the young Van Winkle lives in British America and is a subject of the King; the old Van Winkle awakes in a country independent of the Crown. On a personal level, the awakened Van Winkle has gained another form of "independence": being widowered from his shrewish wife.
In Orkney, there is a similar folktale linked to the burial mound of Salt Knowe, adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers 50 years have passed. The Orkney Rangers believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay and would almost certainly have known the story.
In Ireland, the story of Niamh and Oisin has a similar theme. Oisin falls in love with the beautiful Niamh and leaves with her on her snow white horse, bound for Tir Na nOg - the land of the ever-young. Missing his family and friends, he asks to pay them a visit. Niamh lends him her horse, warning him never to dismount, and he travels back to Ireland. But 300 years have passed; his family and fellow warriors are all dead. When Oisin encounters some men trying to move a boulder, he reaches down to help them, the girth of the horse's saddle snaps, and he falls to the ground. Before the watching eyes of the men, he becomes a very, very old man.
Author Joe Gioia suggests the basic plot strongly resembles, and may have originated with, an upstate New York Seneca legend of a young squirrel hunter who encounters the mystic "Little People", and after a night with them returns to his village to find it overgrown by forest and everyone gone: that single night had lasted a year.
The story is also similar to the ancient Jewish Talmudic story about Honi the Circle-Maker (Honi M'agel), who falls asleep after asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, Honi falls asleep on the ground, is miraculously covered by a rock, and remains out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and learns he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God, and God takes him from this world.
The story also bears some similarities to stories from east Asia, including the third century AD Chinese tale of "Ranka", as retold by Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals, and the eighth-century Japanese tale "Urashima Tar?". The Hindu story of Muchukunda from the Bhagavatam also displays many similarities to the story of "Rip Van Winkle".
Adaptations
The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, in cartoons, films, stage plays, music, and other media.
Theater
- Actor Joseph Jefferson performed various dramatizations of the character on the 19th-century stage. He and Dion Boucicault wrote an adaptation which opened in London in 1865 and on Broadway in 1866.
Film
- In 1896 Joseph Jefferson filmed a series of short films recreating scenes from his stage adaptations, which are collectively in the U.S. National Film Registry.
- Several other film adaptations have been produced.
Music
- In 1882 Robert Planquette and H.B. Farnie premiered a romantic opera adaptation.
- The 1960s Tale Spinners For Children record series included a dramatization of the "Rip Van Winkle" story.
- Numerous modern songs have been written whose lyrics retell the story, including the 1961 song "Rip Van Winkle" by The Devotions, the 2006 song "Rip Van Winkle" by Witch, and "Kaatskill Serenade" by David Bromberg. In the Belle and Sebastian song "I Could Be Dreaming" an extract from "Rip Van Winkle" is read.
Cartoons and animated films
- The cartoon, Have You Got Any Castles? (1938), depicts Rip Van Winkle trying to fall asleep in a cuckoo clock.
- The animated short Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle (1941) features a caricature of Harpo Marx playing the harp.
- The story inspired an episode of The Flintstones entitled "Rip Van Flintstone", which originally aired on November 5, 1965. In it, Fred falls asleep at the Slate Company picnic and dreams he has awakened 20 years in the future as an old man. He notices various changes to his town of Bedrock and to his friends. Fred remarks that, "Maybe I have fallen asleep for 20 years like in that Rip Van Winklestone story."
- The story was parodied in an episode of the Laurel and Hardy cartoon series entitled "Flipped Van Winkles".
- Rip Van Winkle (1978), a claymation version of the story produced and directed by Will Vinton, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
- An episode of the HBO show Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child gives a feminist retelling of the story as told from the point of view of Rip's wife Vanna. The adaptation, starring Tom Arnold and Calista Flockhart and co-narrated by Gloria Steinem, is set in the 1960s, where Rip is a heavy metal rocker who often neglects his wife and child.
Comics
- Issue 12 of Classics Illustrated retold the "Rip Van Winkle" story with various twists.
- In the Carl Barks comic Rip Van Donald (1950), Donald Duck's nephews trick him into believing that he has been sleeping for 40 years, and has supposedly awakened in the then-future year of 1990. Donald expects to see a fabulous "futuristic" world, and the nephews must use various tricks to keep their prank going. Eventually Donald falls asleep and "returns" to 1950.
- Disney's "Rip van Goofy" (February 1, 1966) is a parody of "Rip Van Winkle", with Goofy portraying the character who sleeps for 20 years. When he awakens, no one remembers him except Mickey Mouse, once a child to whom Rip van Goofy told fantasy stories.
- In a 1988 issue of Boys' Life, the Dink & Duff comic strip has the African-American Cub Scout Dink pondering the meaning of Americanism, only to lapse into a coma and awaken in 2068. A boy who addresses him as "Rip van Dinkle" explains that during the past 80 years the United States has been replaced by an authoritarian monarchy. Dink eventually awakens back in 1988.
Television
- In the 16th episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo (original airdate January 16, 1965), Mr. Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus) plays Rip Van Winkle.
- In the Faerie Tale Theatre children's television series, Francis Ford Coppola directed the 1987 episode "Rip Van Winkle" in which actor Harry Dean Stanton played the title role.
- Tales of Washington Irving, a one-hour animated television special from 1970, presented adaptations of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".
- The TV show Wishbone showed the dog imagining himself as the title character, complete with the men playing nine-pins and his mistaking the George Washington Inn for his old hangout, the King George Inn.
In popular culture
Architecture
- The Rip Van Winkle Bridge spans the Hudson River near Catskill, New York.
Beverages
- Old Rip Van Winkle is a brand of Kentucky Straight Bourbon whiskey produced by the Sazerac Company.
- Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve is the flagship brand of Bourbon whiskey owned by the "Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery" company, actually distilled and bottled by the Sazerac Company.
Literature
- A character in the novel Darkness at Noon (1940) is nicknamed Rip Van Winkle because he spent 20 years imprisoned in solitary confinement.
Music
- The American composer George Whitefield Chadwick wrote a concert overture entitled Rip Van Winkle in 1879, when he was a student in Leipzig.
- Composer Ferde Grofe spent 20 years working on a symphonic tone poem based on "Rip Van Winkle", eventually reworking the material into his Hudson River Suite. One of the movements is entitled "Rip Van Winkle".
See also
- Rip Van Wink from The Beano
References
Citations
Sources
- Irving, Washington & Wyeth, N.C. (illustrator) (1921). Rip Van Winkle (e-book ed.). CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link) at the Internet Archive
- Irving, Washington. Rip Van Winkle. Bartleby (e-book ed.).
- Irving, Washington (1946). Rip Van Winkle. KiddieRecords (Audiobook ed.).
- Rip Van Winkle (film ed.). 1896. at the Internet Archive
- 'Karl Katz', a comparison. Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
- Irving, Washington (1948). Rip Van Winkle (Radio adaptation ed.). Theatre Guild on the Air. Internet Archive
Further reading
- "'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' - Irving's Fictions of Revolution". cowbeech.force9.co.uk.
- "'Rip Van Winkle' Study Guide". Cummings Study Guides.
- "Washington Irving in Birmingham". Birmingham.gov.uk.
External links
- The full text of Rip Van Winkle at Wikisource
- Media related to Rip Van Winkle at Wikimedia Commons
- Rip Van Winkle public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Source of article : Wikipedia
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