Sleepy Hollow: American Gothic

Sleepy Hollow: American Anxiety Via American Gothic The early Americans lived in an America that many are unfamiliar with in this day. Early America was a fierce wilderness rife with uncharted territories and much uncertainty. Thus, there was no doubt that early Americans felt a great deal of anxiety: anxiety about their futures and anxiety about their decision to leave England.

Published in 1820, the story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving is a classic example of American gothic fiction and is a strong representation of the anxiety of the early colonists. Many of the supernatural elements of the short story "Sleepy Hollow" demonstrate a sense of fear about what is, and a fear about the environment, along with an aggravated apprehension about what was to come.

The sense of grimness and gloom is present throughout Irving's story and are tools which he uses to set the tone for the supernatural elements. However, these environmental tones are largely used as literary tools to help manifest the palpable anxiety of these early Americans. Irving clearly distinguishes himself from European Gothic writers who use castles, monasteries and comparable places as settings for their stories, by choosing a dark forest as his setting instead.

The bulk of the story occurs on the bank of the Tappan Zee River at a small harbor on a little village known as Tarrytown: Irving asserts that the forest is known to be "one of the quietest places in the whole world" (3). This description alone is somewhat eerie because the description of the forest seems to indicate that there's an absence of activity: an absence of life. This descriptive line seems to suggest that the forest is so quiet it is observing one.

This creates a strong sense of treachery and furthers the unsettling tone of the entire story. This detail also works to convey that latent sense of anxiety among the early settlers. This anxiety and sense of foreboding only grows: at the end of the story, the entire forest seems to absorb even more supernatural powers, transforming itself into an area of mystery and evil.

Another classic gothic device that Irving uses consistently are the choices of colors and light: the colors selected and mentioned help to convey the sense of darkness and with it, the sense of colonial unrest throughout the story. The most commonly used shades described in the story are black and white. Aside from black representing the gloomy and depressing it also indicates "the dismal end of the legend but also to depict the psychological state of the main protagonist, the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, his awe and utter desperation" (narod.ru).

In many ways one can interpret the story as a battle between these two colors, black and white, and the elements that they represent. For example, white is used to describe the church, as a symbol of final hope. Aside from colors used, there is only a small amount of light in the story: everything is dusk with blurry quality to it. Much of Irving's descriptive choices about the story and the things described in it, have a nebulous and myopic feel to them.

This generally occurs until the darkness of night full subsides on the town: "The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky" (Irving, 8). This device helps to increase the amount of tension, allowing it to build and giving the reader a palpable sense of evil settling in. Other scholars argue that Sleepy Hollow is a short story which explores anxiety about the imminent financial panic which was to come looming in the early 1800s.

These experts assert that the story "depicts the nervous and anxious form of masculinity emerging in the period leading up to and following the devastating financial Panic of 1819, the first widespread financial crisis in U.S. history and a watershed moment in the nation's growing awareness of its own complex and often uneasy relationship to commerce" (David, 111).

One can find a lot of textual support for this notion within the short story indeed: the story is rife with a sense of imminent destruction, and a sort of mystification that nothing can really be done about it. This pervades the text fully and completely and represents the overall mystification that young America felt.