Rip Van Winkle Essays (Examples)

The second Iraq war was ordered by George W. Bush, who became president eight years after the end of his father's presidency11, and Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces and eventually hanged by an Iraqi court12. The U.S. was attacked by Islamic Terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center in new York City in 2001 and the U.S. armed forces have been simultaneously engaged in two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) practically ever since13. Since then, a new cabinet position of Homeland Security Director was added to the president's cabinet14, in conjunction with ongoing counterterrorism as a national focus15.

acial issues have improved enough in the last twenty years that an African-American was elected to the presidency in 200816, and the U.S. seems to have made equally impressive strides in other areas of civil rights and equality, judging by the new laws about discrimination and even same-sex marriage in…

He might have received his wish but that wish cost him 20 years.

In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne allows us to look at the frail nature of man through Brown's curious nature. He wants to know what is happening in the woods and does not stop to think of the unintended consequences. He does not know what to think when he stumbles upon the scene in the forest. The sight of respectable citizens partaking in a satanic ritual makes Brown feel "overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart" (Hawthorne 594). He looses faith in man and, subsequently, faith in God, wondering if there was a "heaven above him" (594). He vows to "stand firm against the devil" (294) despite everything but the knowledge of his wife in the forest proves to be more than he can bear. Hawthorne utilizes the aspect of change to demonstrate the fragile human psyche.…

Melville and rving

The dawn of the American nation brought with it a need for a decidedly American culture, one depicted with careful precision by many of the authors that came to paint the literary landscape of the new magnate across the Atlantic. Washington rving, the first American great, told the story of the nascent, colonial United States through youthful folklore limned with great detail and attention to the inner workings of the human spirit in its new land. Half a century later, Herman Melville entranced the same people with his swashbuckling narration of pirates, whales, and sailors; America's best, who, against all odds, battled sea, spray, and monster to find their way back home. While Melville declared his preference for creative genius over adept imitators like rving, he could not escape rving's influence, from which he learned that realistic details of rural life in American can be worked memorably…

American Literature

Listen to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God preached. Discuss in the discussion group.

Jonathan Edwards gives us a perfect example of the Calvinist beliefs of the Puritan settlers in early New England. Edwards studied theology at Yale University -- where today there is still a dormitory named after him -- but then became a noteworthy preacher in the Great Awakening, which exhorted an entire generation to renew their Christian faith. Edwards' skill in preaching lies in using literary imagery to get across abstract theological concepts. Calvinist theology believes in "total depravity" -- in other words, because of Adam and Eve eating the apple, human beings are fallen, and stained with "original sin." The most memorable image in Edwards' sermon -- the image of the spider being held over a fiery pit -- is meant to be a metaphor to enable the listener to imagine how…

Humor in Literature

American literature is unique in that the attitudes of the works tend to reflect the spirit of the nation and of her citizens. One of the trademarks of American literature is that authors display a tone that can be very serious, but that also can be interpreted as humorous. hereas texts from other cultures are usually more concerned with message and in presenting that message in a dry, even stoic manner, American literature is uniquely capable of mixing the honest and the humorous. Even in the most serious and earnest stories, the sensibility of American humor can be detected. Of course, there are different types of humor. Some stories are flat-out ridiculous and make the reader laugh. Other stories are more sarcastic in their approach to humor and the funny moments have to be analyzed to be better understood. Still other tales are anecdotal and function as…

The expansion meant progress and it implemented the idea of progress into the minds of the new people. As Thomas Jefferson noted, the permanent moving forward of the boundaries and the idea of growth and multiplication enhanced the feeling of unfailing progress: "However our present interests may restrain us within our limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not southern, continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface." (Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 1970, p. 746) Turner was the one who has actually laid the basis for a theory of the frontier in American history in the nineteenth century. Before him however, Jefferson, long before he came…

Cross-Cultural; Study

Plot

The plot of the fairytale of Rip Van Winkle is such that it moves from the current time in the tale, then skips twenty years ahead all crumped up in one night and back to the present time. RIP goes out into the woods and gets attracted by the spirits into their cave in the rocks where he gets drunk and passes out for the whole night. When he wakes up he finds himself not in the cave of the bearded and strange men but in the woods, in his hand a rusted gun and his Wolf dog missing, his clothes are tattered and his beards overgrown. When he returns to the village, things have changed, many buildings he knew yesterday were strange and the people in the village are all strange. It was upon enquiry and interacting with the people that he realizes he had actually…

It is a farce, founded on dishonesty: like the old regime itself. And Alex has become the neurotic, control-freak prime minister, acting on behalf of an ageing, debilitated monarch" notes Peter Bradshaw, the film reviewer of the Guardian. A real-life parallel might be that of a child in a nursing home who carefully controls his or her parent's visitors, diet, and lifestyle. Politically, Bradshaw's implication is that the love parents and children feel can mirror a kind of tyranny. The love of an old parent can distort the feelings that the young have a changing world as they become dependant upon propping up the lies of parents. This suggest that love the young for elderly people can inhibit and even unconsciously prevent the ability of the world to change, as they live for a dying, rather than a new ideal.

The film at its best shows how love, perhaps too…

First, evil in Sleepy Hollow is more equating with a satirical view that, in this case, evil is a more benign humor, bumbling, caustic in disrupting the town, and, as it was in Ancient Greek and oman drama, simply more of an irritant than planned destruction. Focusing again on the time period, our first introduction to this theme is one of Dutch New York against Urban New England. The Dutch community is sylvan, nostalgically conceived, changeless, and an Eden for its inhabitants. Ichabod arrives as a Yankee whose spoiling of this Eden simply cannot be tolerated -- and even more, by marrying the daughter of a wealthy and high-ranking community member, becoming part of Eden himself. This simply could not happen to a community that is so "European in nature."

Sleepy Hollow, as a town is clearly Dutch, with Dutch values, culture, and mores, or for riving, "population, manners, and…

As Yu Tsun himself describes the glum setting of his train trip:

There was hardly a soul on the platform. I went through the coaches; I remember a few farmers, a woman dressed in mourning, a young boy who was reading with fervor the Annals of Tacitus, a wounded and happy soldier.

The coaches jerked forward at last. A man whom I recognized ran in vain to the end of the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden. Shattered, trembling, shrank into the far corner of the seat, away from the dreaded window.

Moreover, Yu Tsun's final train ride toward killing and being killed is not even anything of a labyrinthine (or even mildly interesting) journey through the likes of gardens, or along forking paths. Instead, this is just a straight, direct, well-worn; non-ambiguous shot to another non-descript, poorly lighted train station replete with more dim lighting and plenty of shadows…

This is where incentives come in to play. agner quotes Rudolf Hickel who distinguishes between an entrepreneurial state and a tax state (our present state of affairs). Hickel and Schumpeter both see the tax state as acting outside the normal laws of contract and property to confiscate wealth. The entrepreneurial state is just the exact polar opposite of this. Corporatist principles that have been incorporated into this system. Corporate structures were in their infancy in 1787 when the U.S. Constitution was written, hence the lack of corporatist principles (ibid, 56-57). e must now incorporate the wisdom of two centuries of follow on experience.

These corporatist principles would turn a government entity like a city into a private corporation with stockholders that would provide services. In this view, government has created some markets. It is in the market already. Therefore, for us to bring the entrepreneurial state, we need to introduce…

Domestic Prison

Gender oles and Marriage

The Domestic Prison: James Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) and "The Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin depict marriage as a prison for both men and women from which the main characters fantasize about escaping. Louise Mallard is similar to the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that they are literally imprisoned in a domestic world from which there is no escape but death or insanity. As in all of this early feminist fiction, the women characters are defined as 'sick', either physically or mentally, for even imaging a situation on which they might be free, for they are allowed no lives of their own. Louise Mallard was overjoyed when she heard that her husband was killed in an accident,…

Amish are a long-standing religious sect, created in the 17th century after the first Amish broke from the Mennonite Protestant tradition because of "what they perceived as a lack of discipline among the Mennonites" (The Amish: History, belief, practices, 2011, eligious Tolerance). The original Amish were of Swiss and German extraction. Many migrated to the U.S. In the early stages of the sect's formation, settling in Pennsylvania, and gradually branching out into New York, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri Ohio, and other states where they still reside today. No Amish remain in Europe. "The faith group has attempted to preserve the elements of late 17th century European rural culture. They try to avoid many of the features of modern society, by developing practices and behaviors which isolate themselves from American culture" (The Amish: History, belief, practices, 2011, eligious Tolerance).

The Amish used to be farmers, marking the culture as 'pastoral' in…

Many colonists had come to the new world in search of a lifestyle infused with greater freedom. The colonists' ideas about government differed greatly from their English counterparts. hile the English still focused on the power of the monarchy, the colonists had been holding popular assemblies since 1763 ("The American Revolution: First Phase"). They began to believe in rights that they saw the English and their stationed guards as there to violate. In addition, they believed that they, not a country across the ocean, should have the right to control or at least have a say in the political decisions that would affect their lives.

In addition to these highly popularized economic and ideological causes of the revolution, social causes also added fuel to the fire of revolution. As the 1700s wore on, More and more Americans came from European countries other than England. As these people began to immigrate…

Man of the Crowd

By Edgar Allan Poe (1840)

The story significantly depicts not only the preoccupation of the 17th hundred London issues and a trend brought by the progressive industrialization of time, but speaks so much relevance in our modern time as well. The epigraph which sums up the very essence of the story explains the dynamic of a human being too busy to mingle with the crowd for fear of facing the haunting memory of a disturbed self, the lonely person, the conscience and the unsettling disturbances deep within. The epigraph "Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone" is rich in context within the story, but also a rich source of reflection of a human and societal struggle. I firmly believe in the relevance of the story not only in its significance to the theme and era when this story was written, but for…

Thomas Paine was an earlier conqueror of the special association that was formed between America and France. His part in this association was initiated with his responsibility of the post of American Congress Secretary of Foreign Affairs where he continually used dialogue to make relations between the two better. He retained this post throughout the American evolution. Paine, however, is better noted for his works written throughout the American and French evolutions Eras. In his writings, Paine offered spirited protection of accepted autonomy, human rights, and the republican government. Both Common Sense (1776) ights of Man (1791-1792) stick out as the most broadly read political areas from the era. Paine's distinctive global thought also can serve as the building blocks for liberal cosmopolitanism in worldwide relations. His unrelenting faith in aspects of democratization, free trade, and respect for human rights being the factors that cut back worldwide conflict stands among…

Thomas Paine & the American Crisis

Thomas Paine and the American Crisis

Thomas Paine was a brilliant political propagandist. He devoted his life to the causes of freedom, liberty, and justice and believed in the essential rights and liberties of all human beings, including the right to resist tyrannical authority. These beliefs are evident in The American Crisis, written at the height of the revolution to rally American forces. After its publication, it was very difficult for colonists not to be convinced that separation from British rule was the correct course of action.

Paine's work was directed toward erasing political and social injustices rather than creating new political systems. He argued for the natural rights of man and that the state existed to serve man, not the reverse. "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the…