Rip Van Winkle

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Rip Van Winkle; An American Myth Washington Irving helped create an American mythology with his story “Rip Van Winkle”. Irving created a nations mythology through incorporating several mythological characteristics into his writing. These characteristics include a setting in a past remote place, filling the story with exaggerated characters, and featuring and incredible and mysterious event. Each of these characteristics impact a reader's experience of the story in different ways. Irving incorporated the mythological characteristic of setting his story in a past and remote place in “Rip Van Winkle”. He set his story in a small, distant village underlying the Kaatskill Mountains. The mountains themselves seem to have a mysterious, magical quality about them that is stated in the passage “Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but some times, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits.” This shows the reader that the setting of the story is mysterious as well as remote. The village itself is described as small and old. The reader sees this in the statement “At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have described the light smoke curling up from a village, … it is a little village of great antiquity.” By stating that the village has antiquity the reader gets the feeling of being in the past. The setting’s characteristics largely impacted the readers experience of the story by putting one’s mind into a mysterious place and time. Irving also incorporated the mythological characteristic of exaggerated characters in “Rip Van Winkle”. The exaggerations are
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