Rip Van Winkle Identity

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After a twenty-year slumber in the Kaatskill Mountains, Rip Van Winkle returns to the town where he once lived. Upon his return, Rip finds his old house abandoned, his town transformed and those that were once his friends were now either dead or missing. After reaching this conclusion, Rip is overcome with doubt, but suddenly eyes fall upon his doppelgänger, walking up and down the streets where he once had, it is at this time that Rip’s doubt provokes him to relinquish his identity. A cry slips from his lips, his words coated with anxiety, “… I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name or who I am!” (540) This single statement defines his loss, his ripening madness, without recognition, without the acknowledgement of his people, Rip has become nothingness for he depends on his existence to be validated by the eyes of his community. To delve deeper into this disillusion, one must first understand who Rip is and how his community views his character. Within the text, Washington Irving unravels Rip to be an amiable fool, reinforced by his statement that Rip is “… one of those happy mortals, of foolish well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat bread or brown, which ever can be got with least thought or trouble and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.” (532) and that “if left to himself would whistle his life away” (532) This description outlines Rip as a man for little concern for the future or even the pressing matters that surround him. Although these traits are usually frowned upon my members of any society, it is important to understand what conclusions others draw from his disposition. Despite the range of satire made of Rip, in relation to his standing as a “henpecked husband”, the story also shares with the reader aspects of Rips good nature. Irving states “He would never even refuse to assist a neighbor in the roughtest toil,

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