The Impact of the American Revolutionary War In “Rip Van Winkle” By Washington Irving

Washington Irving’s story "Rip Van Winkle" is one of the most popular works of American literature with its plot, characters, and historical significance. Rip Van Winkle is a Dutch American man in one of the colonies who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up 20 years later, after the American Revolutionary War, as a result of which the United States of America was founded. When the British Kingdom kept increasing the taxes while not providing a chance for the colonies to represent themselves, the Thirteen Colonies revolted against it and declared independence from the crown. After the war, Americans attached themselves to their initial aim when they came to America, which was to have a life free from discrimination based on status and disorder in Europe and to value their liberty deeply. Irving’s story aims to show the impact of the war on American life through allegory with the characters Rip Van Winkle and Dame Van Winkle and places and objects such as the inn in the town and the portrait on the wall.

Firstly, Rip Van Winkle stands as a representation of the colonies and their relationship with Britain. When Europeans came to America, they had an idea of a life with peace and prosperity, a life in which they could be free from the labels of European discrimination and have something for themselves. In his book The Epic of America, while explaining the American dream, James Truslow Adams states, "It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position," (404), which means these people wanted to be accepted; however, Britain did not accept them by not even having representatives from the colonies in the parliament. As a representation of the colonies, Rip Van Winkle does not get appreciation from his wife, Dame Van Winkle. He does not work to become rich; he does enough work for survival and mostly helps other people with their work when needed. He is appreciated by the rest of the town for his helpful demeanor; however, his wife sees him as a lazy person who cannot manage taking care of his family. Just as England forces the colonies to overwork to pay taxes, Rip is forced to work to meet his wife's demands. Both the colonies and Rip are not content with their "rulers," so the colonies gain their independence from the wants of England with the revolution, and as a parallel to this, Rip gains his freedom after his twenty-year sleep.

As it comes to the inn Van Winkle went to and the portrait on its wall represents British rule over the colonies and the colonies’ passiveness under this rule. The inn and the portrait are described in the story through the following quote:

For a long, he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a  kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a  rubicund portrait of His  Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long, lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip,  or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. (Irving 12)

Rip and his friends, as stated, are barely able to receive information out of town, and when they do, it is not even current news. Thus, all Rip and his friends do is sit in the shadow of the king's portrait and gossip and talk about the news that they cannot properly receive. Everyone at the inn is passive and stable. After Rip wakes up from sleep and returns to the town, he sees that the inn is replaced by "the Union Hotel," which has a picture of George Washington on its wall instead of the portrait of George III. It is also stated that the environment has changed as well: "The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity" (Irving 19). After the revolution, people no longer sit under the portrait of the king in the calm atmosphere of the inn, but they become more active in their lives under the rule of George Washington. With this shift in the story, Irving depicts that the people of America got rid of being useless people themselves and living under the shadow of the British Kingdom and became free individuals with dynamic lives.

Washington Irving describes the situation the people in America lived in under the rule of Britain by using the characters Rip Van Winkle and Dame Van Winkle as representations of colonial America and the British Kingdom, and by showing the shift in the environment after the inn and the portrait of George III are replaced by the Union Hotel and the picture of George Washington in his famous short story "Rip Van Winkle."