RIP VAN WINKLE
By Washington Irving
Setting
- Began 5 or 6 years before the American
Revolution and ended 20 years later.
* Main characters
- Rip has both positive and negative personalities
- positive: kind, good-natured, friendly, helpful,
simple...
- Negative: lazy, careless, irresponsible
- Rip’s wife: termagant, scolding, domineering
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1.
Themes:
Changes with continuity
+ Population
+ area expansion
+ Standard of living/ economic development
+ Gaining Independence, Freedom and Democracy
+ People’s conception/perception/awareness:
Way of living+civil rights
Themes:
2. The great impacts of the American Revolution
upon the small and remote village by Hudson
river:
Many big changes happened fast after a short
time of 20-year American Revolution
3. Preservation of tradition and culture: the
unchanged Catskill mountain and Hudson River
4. American values: Adaptability & flexibility