Rip Van Winkle Flashcards, test questions and answers
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What is Rip Van Winkle?
Rip Van Winkle is a short story written by Washington Irving in 1819. The story follows the life of Rip Van Winkle, a Dutchman who takes an extended nap in the Catskill mountains and wakes up 20 years later to find that his sleepy village has been transformed into a bustling American town. The story is known for its exploration of themes such as change, identity, and nostalgia.The story opens with Rip Van Winkle, an amiable man but greatly disliked by his wife and her family due to his laziness and love of drinking. One day he decides to take a walk in the woods near his village and encounters some strange men playing nine pins. He joins them for drinks which turn out to be enchanted liquor that puts him into deep sleep for twenty years until he wakes up again. When he returns home, he finds that all his old friends have died or moved away and no one recognizes him because so much time has passed since he left the village. Rip is overwhelmed by this sudden transformation but eventually decides to make peace with it since there’s nothing else he can do about it. He visits some old friends who tell him stories about what happened while he was asleep: the Revolutionary War had come and gone, America had become an independent nation, slavery had been abolished, etc. Through these stories we see how much has changed even though Rip himself hasn’t aged at all during this time periodhe’s still stuck in a kind of timelessness despite all these changes around him.