Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle is a short story by Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. It was part of a collection of stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. The story has become a part of cultural mythology: even for those who have never read the original story, "Rip Van Winkle" means either a person who sleeps for a long period of time, or one who is inexplicably (perhaps even blissfully) unaware of current events.

Story

The story, written while Irving was staying with his sister Sarah and her husband Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent lives in a nice village at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. He is loved by all except the one person who matters to him, his wife. He escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. After an adventure playing nine-pins with the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, and sharing their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up 20 years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place and he is not supposed to be a loyal subject of any Hanoverian any longer. Rip's tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, and certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.

The story is a close adaptation of Peter Klaus the Goatherd by J.C.C. Nachtigal, which is a shorter story set in a German village. The choice of "Van Winkle" for the character's name may have been influenced by the fact that Irving's New York publisher was C. S. Van Winkle.

It is also close to Karl Katz, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. This story is almost identical. One difference is when he sees dwarfs playing a game of ninepins in a mountain meadow, he joins the game. The dwarfs give him a magic drink that makes him fall asleep for twenty years. It is implied that the dwarfs are teaching him a lesson about laziness.

The story is also remarkably similar to the ancient Jewish story about Honi the Circle-Maker who falls asleep after berating a very old man for planting a carob tree (which traditionally takes 70 years to mature). He sleeps under the tree, covered by the brush and out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and that he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he wishes death upon himself. Note also that the family name of Honi is as well a term of geometry ('Magel' is Hebrew for 'circle'), as well as the family name of Rip ('Winkel' is German for 'angle').

The story is also remarkably similar to a 3rd century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold in Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.

Adaptations

File:Ripvanwinkle.jpg

Joseph Jefferson as Rip van Winkle, 1896

The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films. Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the US National Film Registry. Jefferson's son Thomas followed in his father's footsteps and also played the character in a number of early 20th century films.

Miscellaneous

The Rip Van Winkle story is the origin of Anthony Rogers (more popularly known as Buck Rogers) as depicted in Philip Francis Nowlan's 1929 novella Armageddon 2419 A.D.

North Carolina was nicknamed the "Rip Van Winkle State" during the period 1820-1850 for its reputation of backwardness, closed-mindedness, and lack of economic opportunities.[1]

The plot device is used in a Twilight Zone episode, The Rip Van Winkle Caper, as four crooks sleep for 100 years to escape punishment.

Mrs. Rip Van Winkle is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy

There is a character named Rip van Winkle in Kouta Hirano's vampire manga Hellsing. The character is a female werewolf.

See also

• Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
• sleeping heroes
• Woody Allen's Sleeper
• Goodbye Lenin
• Urashima Tarō
• Narcolepsy
• Rip Van Wink from The Beano
• Silverpilen
• Girlfriend in a Coma (novel)
• Rip Van Winkle (operetta)
• Honi the Circle-Maker

External links

• Rip Van Winkle Study Guide
• "Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker" - full e-text of story
• Irving in Birmingham
• Rip van Winkle the short story with illustrations by Arthur Rackham
• Rip Van Winkle, complete downloadable 1896 film
• Rip's Twenty Years' Sleep at IMDb
• Rip van Winkle - Music