The Historical Allegory in Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle

The Historical Allegory in Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle

        An allegory is a story that has several and different meanings depending on the interpretation(s) given to it by the writer as well as the readers/audience. Writers are fond of using allegory to depict dangerous social, cultural, or, sometimes times, political issues affecting the people. In most instances, the hidden meaning in an allegory revolves around an influential person, a government, or other systems of leadership that cannot be confronted head-on by the writer. An allegory is thus rhetoric that writers and artists utilize when they intend to criticize their leaders but are fearful of harsh punishment that this may grant them. It is, therefore, a tool that writers and artists like to present a story that is joyous and full of fun superficially yet has a deeper meaning when evaluated keenly in the earliest times most artists employed this rhetoric to camouflage their intent while writing their stories. Washington Irving is on such a writer who was replete in using allegory in conveying his views and scorning evil deeds by the administration. Rip Van Winkle is one of his allegoric stories.

Rip Van Winkle is one of the most well-known short stories authored by the American pioneer writer Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle is one of the several other stories in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon collection. This story is very significant within American literature because, even though it is an adaptation of a European myth, it is one of the first literary works based on American local history. This paper aims to show utilizing an example that an allegorical reading can be found inside this short story.

An allegory is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, personalities, and events. Allegory can be used both in prose and poetry to tell a story with an educational purpose or to explain an idea.

The anthology is an account of a lazy man who fell asleep for twenty years. When this person woke up after the twenty years of sleep, he discovered that the village had undergone several transformations from what he historically knew it to be. The anthology is thus a reflection of America before and after the American Revolutionary War (Freeman, n/d). The story metaphorically uses characters to represent the systemic developments and transformations that have taken place within America from its Revolutionary experience, before English rule, to the early American colonies under English law, as well as the American colonies after the Revolution. The entire episode is personified in the main character of the story Rip Van Winkle.  The struggles and tribulations that occurred Rip are similar to the struggles and challenges that America experienced during this period. Rip Van Winkle is metaphorically used by Irving in the anthology to describe the transformations/transitions that the American society underwent during the Revolutionary period (Freeman, n/d).

Moreover, this short story could be seen as an allegorical interpretation considering Rip Van Winkle as a symbolic character who embodies American colonies. Rip is described in two different ways. Firstly, he is portrayed as a simple, good-natured man; he was a kind neighbor and an obedient hen-pecked husband. In another account, he is described differently as a person who was last and could not do anything that his wife requested him to do. He was unable to perform his obligatory duties as a   family man and a father (Freeman, n/d). The first one is a description made from Rip’s neighbors’ point of view, which is identified with the American citizen’s perspective, and the second one is a vision seen from Rip’s wife, which is the same thought that English Loyalists had about America.

Dame Van Winkle embodies England. She is a very demanding and tyrannical wife, as well as England, which was a brutal force that oppressed American colonies for a long time. She is always berating her husband because of his idleness. This oppression manifested in the way in which Rip’s wife mistreated him, as it is claimed in the reading when the author posits that Rip’s wife repeatedly reminded him of his laziness, Careless attitude, and the possible consequences they would have on his family.  In this context, the oppressive power of Dame over her husband is a representation of the control that England had over America when they colonized America and her people. For instance, England imposed heavy taxes on America.  Dame is a metaphor for what England believed America to be before the American Revolution. The English people and their allies perceived Americans as lazy people who were reduced because of the laziness that was characteristic of them.

Moreover, the English men controlled the Americans through the colonialists whom they instructed on what the Americans were to do and what they were not allowed to do. Rip, on the other hand, represents America, as was seen by the English. He was an uneducated and careless drunkard who never took heed of his wife’s views.  This is the way Americans were perceived by the English administration then.

They are not the only characters that hide a metaphor: the villagers symbolize America after and before the Revolutionary War (Belasco & Johnson 973). At the beginning of the story, the village is an old, ruinous place, and his inhabitants are passive, ignorant people, who spend their free time in gossiping. Still, when Rip Van Winkle returns of the mountain, they have changed for better: now the villagers are interested in politics, the village has new buildings and houses are better. Rip hears them talking about the war and political elections, working to achieve their own identity. The people of the village are not loyal to King George III anymore; they rejected the English Crown fiercely (Belasco & Johnson779). American society has changed. The change in their attitude is related to the changes experienced by the American colonies after the war when America achieves its independence (OUP, n/d).

Then, on the one hand, we have the similarities found in Rip Van Winkle’s marriage and the relation between England and America. Alternatively, the changes experimented in American society are a replica of the changes in the villagers’ attitude, which resonates well with the transitions in America before and after the Civil War. For all of those reasons, we can conclude, claiming that there is a clear allegorical reading within this popular short-tale. This allegory might be one of the leading causes of the popularity of this work when it was published: every American citizen could feel identified with Rip Van Winkle’s character.