Rip Van Winkle, a lazy resident of a small town in New York’s Catskills, falls asleep under a tree and wakes up 20 years later to find the town and its people have changed. He becomes a village elder and befriends the younger generation.
The story of Rip Van Winkle first appeared in Washington Irving’s collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon in 1819. One of Irving’s most famous characters, he was a lazy but lovable resident of a small town in New York’s Catskills who disappears for 20 years after falling asleep under a tree. The circumstances of his sleep began after he meets a group of men in strange clothes who are supposedly ghosts.
Rip Van Winkle’s wife, Dame Van Winkle, is perhaps the only resident of the small Dutch settlement in the Catskills who doesn’t like Rip. A gregarious drifter, he spends most of his time tending to the affairs and dealings of all but his own, and as a result his estate has fallen into disrepair. Dame Van Winkle is often very caustic towards her husband, who consequently takes refuge in long walks in the woods with her dog, Wolf, and a gun on his shoulder.
On one such hike, Rip Van Winkle encounters a man struggling up the hill with a keg on his back. Though nervous about doing so, Rip goes to help the man with his load and eventually finds himself in the company of stranger men dressed in old-fashioned Dutch clothing. These men, unbeknownst to Rip, are the ghosts of Henry Hudson’s men. As they play skittles and continue drinking from the keg, Rip Van Winkle surreptitiously tastes their drink and proceeds to get drunk. He then wanders over to a tree where he falls asleep.
Waking up, Rip Van Winkle returns to town expecting a beating from Dame Van Winkle. He carries his rifle – now rusty from age – down the hill and realizes his dog has escaped. But hunger forces him to continue at home; when he reaches the village, he begins to realize that the city has undergone several immense changes and the people of the village are dressed strangely. Several of the villagers outlast him scratching their chins, which prompts Rip to do the same. That’s when she finds out that his beard has grown to 1 foot (0.3m) long and something about him has changed.
Finally someone asks Rip Van Winkle who he is, and he replies that he is a loyal subject of King George III, which is met with outrage as the country has, in its 20-year slumber, undergone a revolution. Eventually someone vouches for his identity and he is taken in by his now grown daughter, and despite the plethora of changes – including, to Rip’s pleasure, his wife’s vitriolic death – he becomes comfortable with his new routine and becomes one of the village elders. He befriends the younger generation of the village; moreover, he becomes the envy of troubled husbands who wish they could escape their wives as he did.
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