Rip Van Winkle

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Rip Van Winkle is a story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, 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.

1 Story
2 Adaptations
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story 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 New York's Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, 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 twenty 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 King George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place. As Rip resumes his habit of idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.

Spoilers end here.

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 asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, he falls aleep on the ground and is miraculously covered by a rock and remains 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 prays to God and God takes him from this world. Note also that the family name of Honi is as well a term of geometry ('M'agel' is Hebrew for 'circle maker'), 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.

[edit] Adaptations

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.