"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution. Inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, Irving wrote the story while temporarily living in Birmingham, England. It was published in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."[1] Plot[edit]Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch-American man with a habit of avoiding useful work, lives in a village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolution. One autumn day, he goes squirrel hunting in the mountains with his dog Wolf to escape his wife's nagging. As evening falls, he hears a voice calling his name and find a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing and carrying a keg. Rip helps the man carry his burden to a cleft in the rocks from which thunderous noises are emanating; the source proves to be a group of ornately dressed and bearded men playing nine-pins. Not asking who these men are or how they know his name, Rip joins them in drinking from the keg he has helped carry and soon becomes so intoxicated that he falls asleep. Rip awakens on a sunny morning, at the spot where he first saw the keg-carrier, and finds that many drastic changes have occurred; his beard is a foot long and has turned gray, his musket is badly deteriorated, and Wolf is nowhere to be found. Returning to his village, he discovers it to be larger than he remembers and filled with people in unfamiliar clothing, none of whom recognize him. When asked how he voted in the election that has just been held, he declares himself a loyal subject of King George III, unaware that the American Revolution has taken place in his absence. He learns that many of his old friends were either killed in the war or have left the village, and is disturbed to find a young man who shares his name, mannerisms, and younger appearance. A young woman states that her father is Rip Van Winkle, who has been missing for 20 years, and an old woman recognizes him as Rip. The young woman and the young Rip are his children, and the former has named her infant son after him as well.  Rip discovers that his wife has been dead for some time, but is not saddened by the news. He learns that the men whom he met in the mountains are rumored to be ghosts of the crew of the Halve Maen (Half-Moon), captained by English sea explorer Henry Hudson. His daughter takes him into her home, and he soon resumes his usual idleness and begins telling his story to every stranger who visits the village. The tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, particularly by the children who say that, whenever thunder is heard, the men in the mountains must be playing nine-pins. Characters[edit]
Composition and publication history[edit]First installment of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819) included "Rip Van Winkle" After a failed business venture with his brothers, Irving filed for bankruptcy in 1818.[2] Despondent, he turned to writing for possible financial support, although he had difficulty thinking of stories to write. He stayed in Birmingham, England, where his brother-in-law Henry Van Wart had opened a trading firm.[3] The two were reminiscing in June 1818 when Irving was suddenly inspired by their nostalgic conversation.[4] Irving locked himself in his room and wrote non-stop all night. As he said, he felt like a man waking from a long sleep. He presented the first draft of "Rip Van Winkle" to the Van Wart family over breakfast.[5] "Rip Van Winkle" was one of the first stories Irving proposed for his new book, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Irving asked his brother Ebeneezer to assist with publication in the United States. As Irving wrote, "I shall feel very anxious to hear of the success of this first re-appearance on the literary stage – Should it be successful, I trust I shall be able henceforth to keep up an occasional fire."[6][7] A British edition was published shortly afterward, by John Miller, who went out of business immediately thereafter. With help from his friend Walter Scott, Irving was able to convince John Murray to take over British publication of the Sketch Book.[8] Following the success of Rip Van Winkle in print and on stage, later celebrated editions were illustrated by Arthur (Heinemann, 1905) and N.C. Wyeth (McKay, 1921). Themes and literary forerunners[edit]In the tenth chapter of his book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, the third-century AD Greek historian Diogenes Laërtius relates the story of the legendary sage Epimenides of Knossos, who was said to have been a shepherd on the island of Crete.[9][10] One day, Epimenides followed after a sheep that had wandered off and, after becoming tired, went into a cave under Mount Ida and fell asleep. When he awoke, he continued searching for the sheep, but could not find it, so he returned to his father's farm, only to discover that it was under new ownership. He went home, only to discover that the people there did not know him. Finally, he encountered his younger brother, who had become an old man, and learned that he had been asleep in the cave for fifty-seven years.[9][10] According to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be 154, 157, or 299 years old.[11] Multiple sources have identified the story of Epimenides as the earliest known variant of the "Rip Van Winkle" fairy tale.[9][10][12][13][14] One story in Judaism concerns Honi HaMe'agel, a miracle-working sage of the 1st century BC, who was a historical character but to whom various myths were attached. While traveling one day, Honi saw a man planting a carob tree and asked him about it. The man explained that the tree would take 70 years to bear fruit, and that he was planting it not for himself but for the generations to follow him. Later that day, Honi sat down to rest but fell asleep for 70 years; when he awoke, he saw a man picking fruit from a fully mature carob tree. Asked whether he had planted it, the man replied that he had not, but that his grandfather had planted it for him.[15] In Christian tradition, there is a similar, well-known story of "The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", which recounts a group of early Christians who hid in a cave circa 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius. They fell into a miraculous sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, to discover that the city and the whole Empire had become Christian.[13] This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a famous Sura of the Quran, Sura Al-Kahf.[16] The version recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later.[17] Another similar story in the Islamic tradition is of Uzair (usually identified with the Biblical Ezra) whose grief at the Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was so great that God took his soul and brought him back to life after Jerusalem was reconstructed. He rode on his revived donkey and entered his native place. But the people did not recognize him, nor did his household, except the maid, who was now an old blind woman. He prayed to God to cure her blindness and she could see again. He meets his son who recognized him by a mole between his shoulders and was older than he was.[18][19] (see Uzair#Islamic tradition and literature). The story of "Rip Van Winkle" itself is widely thought to have been based on Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal's German folktale "Peter Klaus",[4][13] which is a shorter story set in a German village. It tells of a goatherd named Peter Klaus who goes looking for a lost goat. He finds some men drinking in the woods and, after drinking some of their wine, he falls asleep. When he wakes back up, twenty years have passed.[4][20] In many ways, the story is a classic European fairy tale of a man who is actually rewarded for helping the fairies move their barrel. They advance him to a time in life where he is free of his nagging wife. He is now old enough for it to be respectable for him to take it easy and play with children, working when he wants to instead of when he has to, supported by his loving, grown children.[citation needed] The theme of independence is also explored; the young Van Winkle lives in British America and is a subject of the King; the old Van Winkle awakes in a country independent of the Crown. On a personal level, the awakened Van Winkle has gained another form of "independence": being widowed from his shrewish wife.[citation needed] In Orkney, there is a similar folktale linked to the burial mound of Salt Knowe, adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers 50 years have passed. The Orkney Rangers[clarification needed] believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay and would almost certainly have known the story.[citation needed] In Ireland, the story of Niamh and Oisin has a similar theme. Oisin falls in love with the beautiful Niamh and leaves with her on her snow white horse, bound for Tir Na nOg – the land of the ever-young. Missing his family and friends, he asks to pay them a visit. Niamh lends him her horse, warning him never to dismount, and he travels back to Ireland. But 300 years have passed; his family and fellow warriors are all dead. When Oisin encounters some men trying to move a boulder, he reaches down to help them, the girth of the horse's saddle snaps, and he falls to the ground. Before the watching eyes of the men, he becomes a very, very old man. Author Joe Gioia suggests the basic plot strongly resembles, and may have originated with, an upstate New York Seneca legend of a young squirrel hunter who encounters the mystic "Little People", and after a night with them returns to his village to find it overgrown by forest and everyone gone: that single night had lasted a year.[21] The story also bears some similarities to stories from East Asia, including the third century AD Chinese tale of "Ranka", as retold by Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals, and the eighth-century Japanese tale "Urashima Tarō".[13] The Hindu story of Muchukunda from the Bhagavatam also displays many similarities to the story of "Rip Van Winkle".[22][23] The theme is taken up in numerous modern works of science fiction. In H. G. Wells's The Sleeper Awakes, a man who sleeps for 203 years wakes up in a completely transformed London where he has become the richest man in the world. In the original Buck Rogers book, the protagonist falls asleep under the influence of a gas in a mine, sleeps for four centuries and wakes to find America under the rule of Mongol invaders – whereupon he places himself at the head of the freedom fighters. In Roger Zelazny's science-fantasy series The Chronicles of Amber, protagonist Corwyn experiences drinking and revelry in an underground lair with otherworldly people who try to entice him into slumber; he knows this is a centuries-of-sleep trap and resists; the passage is similar in theme to both "Rip Van Winkle" and especially the Orkney story. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, under which a person traveling at near light speed would experience only the passage of a few years but would return to find centuries had passed on Earth, provides a broad new scope to express essentially the same literary theme – for example, in the opening chapter of Ursula K. Le Guin's Rocannon's World. In Robert Heinlein's Time for the Stars, Earth sends out a fleet of relativistic ships to explore the galaxy, their crews hailed as stalwart pioneers – but after a century, which they experience as only a few years, faster-than-light ships are developed and the earlier ones are recalled, their crews discovering that they had become unwanted anachronisms on a changed Earth. The protagonist notices a newspaper headline disparagingly announcing the arrival of himself and his shipmates as "yet another crew of Rip Van Winkles". The Queen song "'39" is similarly a tale of relativistic space travelers returning to their home planet to find a century has elapsed. Adaptations[edit]The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, in cartoons, films, stage plays, music, and other media. Theater[edit]
Film[edit]
Music[edit]
Cartoons and animated films[edit]
Comics[edit]
Television[edit]
Poetry[edit]
Statue[edit]There is a statue of Rip Van Winkle in Irvington, New York. In popular culture[edit]Infrastructure[edit]
Beverages[edit]
Literature[edit]
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Television[edit]
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Sources[edit]
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External links[edit]What made rip sleep for how many years he slept?Rip Van Winkle escapes to the mountains to get away from his wife, who wants him to do work on their farm. He meets a group of men, accepts a drink from them, and then falls asleep for 20 years.
Did Rip Van Winkle actually sleep for 20 years?(AP) _ Rip Van Winkle did not sleep the sleep of the enchanted, snoozing 20 years away in the haunted Catskill Mountains. The lovable rogue of Washington Irving's story was a real man who abandoned his wife and children to become an 18th century barfly in New York City, claims literary detective Steven Press.
How did rip fall into a deep sleep?Rip agreed to help the stranger. Together they reached a place where there were some more odd-looking men, playing ninepins. His companions emptied the contents of the keg into large containers. Rip also tasted the drink and soon fell into a deep sleep.
How long did rip sleep sleep in the woods?It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution.
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What made rip sleep for 20 years?
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