One of the more intriguing aspects of "Rip Van Winkle" is that among all of the literature we produced during what was arguably one of the greatest periods of literary production in America--the era of Romanticism--one of the very few characters that has emerged and endured as a pop culture icon has been Rip Van Winkle.  (Interestingly enough, another of Irving's creations, Ichabod Crane, has also done pretty well on the pop culture circuit).  I find this significant because something becomes iconic in pop culture when it speaks to something we value, something we want, something we want to be.  Keep in mind that Rip Van Winkle hasn't been a shooting star, lasting briefly then flaming out.  It's been almost 200 years since the story was published, and we still know the name and basic story of Rip Van Winkle, even if we've never actually read the story.  But what really makes this interesting is that the character of Rip would seem to stand against everything we presume to be central to American character.  All you need to do is think for a moment how the Puritans would have regarded a person such as Rip.



The story does have a significance beyond that of the character of Rip, and it's revealed in the opening of the story: the foregrounding of the American landscape in Irving's description and use of the Catskill Mountains.  In an earlier post I mentioned that one way American writers answered the call for an idiosyncratic American literature was to celebrate our landscape, which was perceived as meaningfully different (in look and value) from the Old World landscape.  In this story before Irving ever calls our attention to the main characters, he sets the reader into an identifiably American landscape, and a landscape that would serve both as setting and metaphor.

But no doubt, this story is about Rip.  In many ways Rip can elicit similar polar reactions as those elicited by Bartleby.  On the one hand Rip seems to be little more than a lump, and quite happy to be that.  He violates virtually everything our Puritan heritage has taught us about a work ethic and the moral value of work.  Before we at least partially excuse him for having to endure a shrewish wife, I think we have to consider that she has a point in her complaints.  After all, he seems willing to help others outside of the family, but would rather go on a 20 year bender than actually do something for his own house and family.  One thing to recognize in this story is that we see things as Rip sees them, not as his wife sees them.  And it doesn't take an intimate knowledge of Puritan values to imagine how they would react to a man who willfully leaves his family to indulge in drunken excess.

But that being said, things still are not that simple.  There's the nagging fact I mentioned before--for someone who seems so anti-American in character, he sure has enjoyed longstanding popularity.  And before you say that the popularity is because we can look at him and feel good about ourselves because we're not like him, there's that other even more nagging fact: Rip comes back from his bender, and becomes ... famous and respected.  Let me emphasize this--he has done nothing, he has accomplished nothing, and he becomes famous and respected.  Somehow he has managed to re-invent himself, which is indeed an American characteristic, but has re-invented himself by basically sleeping one off.

So this leads to a question similar to that which we asked of Bartleby.  Is Rip an example of individualism taken to an heroic degree?  He does, after all, seem to have the characteristics common to other rugged individualists in our culture and literature.  First, he has the ability to move at will.  Second, he refuses to behave according to social convention, and so perhaps presents a threat to society and social order.  Third, he defines his worth no according to how others outside of him perceive him, but according to his own internal values.