Rip Van Winkle lives in a small village in the fictional Kaatskill mountains in the Appalachian region of North America. He lives here somewhere in the 1760s. Rip has few friends, and dislikes his marriage, which was probably but in place by the parents of the two, Rip’s wife is called dame van winkle and is is clear that Rip passively resists her. One day, in one of his walks up into the mountains, he decides that it’ll be too dark when he gets homme, and he’ll spend the night in the mountains, much to his chagrin, since Damme van Winkle will be angry at him for that. 

““If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. ”

He drifts off to sleep, and wakes up when a weirdly dressed man awakens him, he notices that his dog has disappeared and his pistol had gotten old and rusted, he follows the man down to town, and realizes that it has grown greatly, and also that his beard is a foot long. After seeing that his house has been abandoned for years, how goes to the mayor and tells his story, and immediately becomes a paternal figure in the town, telling the story happily for years, having been freed from the tyranny of his marriage, and the colonies being freed from England, now the United States of America.

We have all expected to like something and ended up hating it, and loving something else. I wanted to play the clarinette in fifth grade and ended up playing the flute, simply because I ended up liking the flute better. But this also happens often with books and short stories, I started the short story Rip van Winkle with a great amount of anticipation, since I had planned to read and write about The most dangerous game, but I thought it would be interesting to just read Rip van Winkle first, I ended up getting “Sucked in” and decided to do Rip van Winkle instead. Rip van Winkle unlocked a curious “what if?” Inside of me, and I wanted to see what would happen when Rip woke up, I felt bad for him in his unhappy marriage and I wanted him to escape it. I also wanted the colonies to be free (MURICA!) so when he awoke, needless to say I was happy with the outcome. For most it would be depressing to read about some one who went to sleep and woke up 20 years ;after, with all of his friends and most of his family dead. But for Rip it was a god thing. He had never enjoyed life, farming and then going on depressed walks to the mountains, but after waking up, he frequently goes to the inn, and shares his stories, becoming a wizened paternal figure in the town, from the era “before the war” However, I’m not saying it was all good for Rip, he lost his two best friends, and still aged, even while asleep, but mostly, the situation was a positive event for Rip.

In the end, Rip had been depressed, and may even have been considering suicide while he was in that terrible marriage, and after he woke up he was able to live with his daughter and grandchildren. His daughter’s husband was a nice man, who treated his father in law and wife well, so Rip, even though he didn’t enjoy his marriage, was able to witness a healthy one. Rip made new friends, not in his generation, but in the newer, younger generation, and became a semi celebrity in the town, he was no longer a subject of his wife, and King George the third, but he was now a free citizen of these United States of America. Free from tyranny, free from marriage, and free from all of the previous bonds that had held him back.