After reading Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” consider it as a story that helped create an Ame

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Assignment Instructions
As you have learned, the stories that make up a nation’s mythology share several characteristics:
• They are set in the past, often in remote or exciting places and times.
• They are filled with remarkable, strange, or exaggerated characters.
• They feature incredible, heroic, impressive, magical, or mysterious events and their consequences.
• They convey a positive message about a nation or its people.
After reading Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” consider it as a story that helped create an American mythology. Then answer the following question in the form of a short essay. Your essay should consist of at least five paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.
How does Irving incorporate at least three of the above characteristics into “Rip Van Winkle”? What is the impact of these characteristics on the story or on the reader’s experience of the story?
Be sure to cite specific examples from the text in your response.

ANSWER

Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle is a short story by Irving and like every other American mythology created, Irving incorporates the characteristics of mythology. The story features an old town and a family of a man by the name Rip. Rip was a good-natured man fellow who lived in the village of Catskill. According to the story, Rip had a shrew wife and had to often escape from the wife, which led him to go hunting with his dog. The short story talks about Rip meeting with a strange character who gives him a drink, and when he wakes up, he has been asleep for 20 years.

Irving in the story has featured a mysterious event which is Rip drinking and waking up 20 years later to fund his wife dead and a grown-up son. Another characteristic of a myth featured in the story is, it is set in a remote area and the past.  Rip can also be described as strange and mysterious as he takes long trips in the mountains to hunt, and then one day he disappears only to come back years later to find everything has changed and few people remember him.

The characteristics of mythology in a short story give the readers an exciting experience and helps them travel to the past and feel like they are part of the book. It also increases the reader’s sense of mystery and childlike wonder where they are forced to wonder what led to certain events. The characteristics of mythology also make a short story more interesting.

In conclusion, without the above characteristics, a short story does not qualify to be mythology and is not likely to attract mythology fanatics. Rip Van Winkle is thus an interesting American mythology and an interesting piece to read.

Work Cited

Irving, Washington. Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories. Courier Dover Publications, 2018.