Contemporary Rural America Captured in Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of

Contemporary Rural America Captured in rive Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Most Americans probably view our times argon different from Washington Irvings era. After all, almost 200 years have passed, and the differences in technology and civil liberties alone are huge. However, these dissimilarities seem merely surface ones. When reading Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I find that the world Irving creates in each point is very familiar to the one in which I grew up. The players may have changed, and institutions have mostly replaced roles traditionally taken on by people, but the boilersuit pieces still fit the rural lifestyle of contemporary America. Perhaps the biggest variation from life in these stories and life today in the small town concerns the role of the Van Tassels. As the prominent family in Sleepy Hollow, they serve as the social center. Baltus Van Tassel has more the air of an English country squire during incre ase time than he does an American farmer. He is hearty, down to earth, and full of largesse (Sleepy Hollow 549, 556-557). The quilting frolic (553) is really a potluck dance. This type of familiarity gathering continued throughout American history in rural areas. We have barn-raisings, fall festivals, holiday celebrations. However, the nature of the gatherings has changed in that the role of the prominent family in a flash goes to the city or civic groups (such as a church). Rural America still has wealthy families and farmers, but rarely do they open their homes to the community for dance and potlucks. The closest we still see of this is the ranch barbeque, but the outside nature makes it far less intimate. In my experience, these events are... ...ture of King George in Rip Van Winkle. Rip returns to his village twenty years after he left and realizes that someone has transformed the King into George Washington (541). Irving, realizing that much of life is merely a refas hioning of the aforementioned(prenominal) ideas and structures into something that looks new, has taken an old German folk tale and turned it into a story of American life. We may live in a time with immensely different resources, technologies, and opportunities, but the urges that drive us are still the same. Works CitedIrving, Washington. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The American Tradition in Literature. Vol 1. Eds. George Perkins, et al. 7th ed. New York McGraw-Hill, 1990 544-563. 2 vols.---. Rip Van Winkle. The American Tradition in Literature. Vol 1. Eds. George Perkins, et al. 7th ed. New York McGraw-Hill, 1990 533-544. 2 vols.