A Rose for Emily Summary
How It All Goes Down
You might want to look at our discussion of the novel's setting before you enter here, or at least know it's there to help if you get tangled up in this story's crazy chronology. Also keep in mind that the narrator of this story represents several generations of men and women from the town.

The story begins at the huge funeral for Miss Emily Grierson. Nobody has been to her house in ten years, except for her servant. Her house is old, but was once the best house around. The town had a special relationship with Miss Emily ever since it decided to stop billing her for taxes in 1894. But, the "newer generation" wasn't happy with this arrangement, and so they paid a visit to Miss Emily and tried to get her to pay the debt. She refused to acknowledge that the old arrangement might not work any more, and flatly refused to pay.

Thirty years before, the tax collecting townspeople had a strange encounter with Miss Emily about a bad smell at her place. This was about two years after her father died, and a short time after her lover disappeared from her life. Anyhow, the stink got stronger and complaints were made, but the authorities didn't want to confront Emily about the problem. So, they sprinkled lime around the house and the smell was eventually gone.

Everybody felt sorry for Emily when her father died. He left her with the house, but no money. When he died, Emily refused to admit it for three whole days. The town didn't think she was "crazy then," but assumed that she just didn't want to let go of her dad, (even though you could argue that he had stolen her youth from her).

Next, the story doubles back and tells us that not too long after her father died Emily begins dating Homer Barron, who is in town on a sidewalk-building project. The town heavily disapproves of the affair and brings Emily's cousins to town to stop the relationship. One day, Emily is seen buying arsenic at the drugstore, and the town thinks that Homer is giving her the shaft, and that she plans to kill herself.

When she buys a bunch of men's items, they think that she and Homer are going to get married. Homer leaves town, then the cousins leave town, and then Homer comes back. He is last seen entering Miss Emily's house. Emily herself rarely leaves the home after that, except for a period of half a dozen years when she gives painting lessons.

Her hair turns gray, she gains weight, and she eventually dies in a downstairs bedroom that hasn't seen light in many years. The story cycles back to where it began, at her funeral. Tobe, miss Emily's servant, lets in the town women and then leaves by the backdoor forever. After the funeral, and after Emily is buried, the townspeople go upstairs to break into the room that they know has been closed for forty years.

Inside, they find the corpse of Homer Barron, rotting in the bed. On the dust of the pillow next to Homer they find an indentation of a head, and there, in the indentation, a long, gray hair.
•The section begins by saying that Emily "vanquished," or beat those tax collectors, in the same way that she "vanquished" their dads some thirty years ago when they came to her house because of some mysterious "smell."
•This smell showed up about two years after Emily's father died, and pretty soon after her boyfriend left her.
•The neighbors complain to Judge Stevens, the mayor, but he can't think of a way to politely tell Miss Emily (a southern lady) that her roses aren't smelling so sweet.
•So, four guys go to her house and sprinkle lime (see "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" for a discussion of lime) everywhere they can reach.
•They can see Emily watching from an upstairs window. She is described as "motionless as that of an idol" (2.10).
•(You might have to chew on that one before it resonates. It's a confusing line.)
•Anyhow, the smell goes away in a matter of weeks.
•Around this time, the town begins to pity Miss Emily.
•She is more proof that the Grierson family wasn't as superior as they thought they were.
•We learn that Emily's great-aunt, old lady Wyatt, had gone insane, and that Emily's father didn't think any of the men in town were "quite good enough for Miss Emily" (2.11).
•Speaking of Emily's father, the man didn't leave her much more than the house when he died (though the reason isn't given).
•Emily's poverty gives the town a reason to feel sorry for her, and to see her as a human being.
•When the town ladies learned that Emily's father was dead, they went over there to give her their condolences and were met with an Emily in complete denial.
•For about three days she refused to admit that her father was dead.
•The preachers and the doctors worked with her and finally Emily faced the facts and broke down in grief and let them take the body and bury it.
•The town didn't think Emily was insane for being in denial over her father's death.
•They knew that even though the man had "robbed her" (2.14) (by scaring off her suitors), he was really all she had.
•After her father's death, Emily is ill for a good while.
•When she next emerges from the house, she has a short haircut and a sad, angelic look about her.
•Around this time, in the summer after the death of Emily's father, Homer Barron enters the picture.
•He's in town overseeing a crew of men in a project to pave the town's sidewalks.
•Homer is a "Yankee" (he's from the North) and seems to be a real "life of the party" kind of guy.
•Everybody in town is aware of his presence, and soon enough they start seeing him giving Emily rides in his buggy.
•Some townspeople are happy she found somebody, even if he is a northerner.
•But other people think she is shirking her "noblesse oblige" (the notion that wealthy people shouldn't associate with a person of lower rank) (3.3).
•They think she needs family to help her, and consider contacting some obscure cousins, relatives of old lady Wyatt.
•During the time these cousins are staying with Emily, when Emily is "over thirty" (3.6), she goes to the pharmacy and forces the pharmacist to give her arsenic (poison) but won't tell him why she wants it.
•We'll just quote you the final lines of this section, since summary just won't do:
•"When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: 'For rats'" (3.15).
•The town immediately hears about Emily's arsenic purchase, and immediately assumes she will kill herself.
•They also think this is the best solution to her problem.
•When Emily and Homer first became an item, the town thought they would get married.
•Later, the town begins to believe that Homer is gay – he likes to have drinks with "younger men" (4.1) and admits he isn't the marrying kind.
•The town feels sorry for Emily whenever they see her riding with Homer.
•Some of the women become worried that Emily's relationship with Homer is a bad example for the town youths.
•Then, the meddling begins.
•First the town gets the minister to talk to Emily about the Homer Barron problem.
•She must have really told off that minister, because he refuses tell anybody what Emily said to him, and she doesn't stop seeing Homer.
•So, they bring out the big guns: Emily's two female cousins from Alabama, relatives of old lady Wyatt.
•For a little while, the town doesn't think the cousin plan was successful.
•When Emily buys a shaving kit with Homer's initials on it, and "a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt" (4.3), they think that Emily and Homer either are married or soon will be.
•The town is happy about this, because they like the cousins way less than they like Miss Emily and want to see the cousins fail at what they had set out to do.
•Homer's project finishes, and he isn't in town.
•They think he'll be back once Miss Emily's cousins leave, and they're right.
•A few days after the cousins took off, Homer Barron comes back on the scene.
•He is seen entering Miss Emily's house, but never seen after that.
•Other than the occasional glimpse in the window, the town doesn't see Emily for about six months.
•When she emerges after the six months, she's put on lots of weight, and her hair has turned gray.
•It gets grayer and grayer until it is "an even pepper-and-salt iron gray" (4.6).
•At this point, she goes back into her home and doesn't come out of her house until she dies, except for when she gives china-painting lessons.
•She gives the lessons for about six or seven years, beginning when she is about 40.
•But when the younger generation takes over the town, they stop sending their kids to Miss Emily and her door stays closed.
•The town then watches Tobe's hair go gray, as he goes back and forth from the house with the shopping.
•The town sends Miss Emily a bill for her taxes every December, and it is always returned.
•She is only seen, from time to time, in a downstairs window.
•Somehow, the town knows that Miss Emily had "shut up the top floor of her house" (4.9).
•The narrator says she looked "like the carven torso of an idol in a niche" (4.9).
•(An idol is a worshiped, and usually feared, object. Such an object might be placed "in a niche," a spot. And since Emily is in the window, only her torso is visible.)
•Then the narrator tells us that this image of Emily in the window is seen by generations of townspeople. To all these generations she is "dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse" (4.9).
•Emily dies like that in a dusty, old, dark house, with just the aged Tobe for company and care.
•Nobody even knew Emily was sick before she died.
•The town had stopped asking Tobe about her long ago, knowing he wouldn't tell them anything.
•Tobe's voice sounded like it was rarely used. The town doubts he even talked to Emily.
•Miss Emily died in a bedroom downstairs in an old bed that hasn't seen sun in a very long time.
•Tobe opens the door to the women of the town on the day of the funeral, and then he leaves by the back door.
•He isn't seen again, as far as anyone knows.
•The cousins show up right away and hold the big funeral, on the day after Miss Emily's death.
•The narrator says that the town women are pretty grim.
•Some of the older men at the funeral wear their old Confederate soldier uniforms, and believe they are about the same age as Emily. They may even have danced with her and dated her when she was young.
•(Since Emily was seventy-four when she died, these guys must be near that age or older.)
•The narrator says that these men are confused about time, because they don't see the past as a "road" that they get father and farther away from, but as "a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches" (5.2).
•This meadow of the past is only "divided from them by" the last decade (5.2).
•(We think that the narrator is basically saying that for these men, the past is a huge lush playground that never changes. Since the men aren't actually in that past literally, they still feel separated from it by time.)
•Anyhow, the narrator says that town already knows that upstairs in Miss Emily's house there is a certain room, a room that "no one had seen in forty years" (5.3).
•They know they will have to break down the door to get in there.
•Out of decency, they wait until after Miss Emily is buried before they do the deed.
•(You really should check out our "What's Up the Ending?", where you'll find a break-down of the story's final moments.)
•OK, so they've broken down the door.
•It's dusty in here!
•A deathliness seems to cover everything in the room, which is set up like a bridal suite.
•This deathliness covers the curtains, which are "of a faded rose color," and the light covers are "rose-colored" (5.4).
•It even colors the old, silver shaving-kit on the dressing table.
•Also on the dressing table we have a collar (in those days most men's shirts had removable collars), and a tie.
•In the bed, we have…
•Homer Barron!
•He's wearing a smile and his body looks like it "had once lain in the attitude of embrace" (5.6).
•(So he died hugging Emily?)
•We'll quote the next little bit for you: "[B]ut now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him" (5.6).
•Let's take a closer look at this line: the "sleep that outlasts love" is death, right? To cuckold is to cheat on your significant other. So, we think the basic meaning of the passage is that death has finally cheated on him with Emily and/or that Emily has cheated on Homer with death.
•There isn't much left of Homer.
•He's just about rotted into the bed, nightshirt and all.
•There's a pillow next to him.
•On the pillow is "an indentation of a head" (5.7).
•One of the townspeople picks something up off of the pillow.
•It's a hair, a "long strand of iron-gray hair" (5.7).

Rose for Emily Plot Analysis
Initial Situation
Death and Taxes
As we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on the Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," in this initial scene. We move from a huge funeral attended by everybody in town, to this strange little story about taxes.
Conflict
Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.
The taxes seem tame compared to what comes next. In Section II, we learn lots of bizarre stuff about Miss Emily: when her father died she refused to believe it (or let on she believed it) for four days (counting the day he died); the summer after her father died, she finally gets a boyfriend (she's in her thirties); when worried that her boyfriend might leave her, she bought some poison and her boyfriend disappeared, but there was a bad smell around her house. We technically have enough information to figure everything out right here, but we are thrown off by the issue of the taxes, and by the way in which facts are jumbled together.
Complication
The Town's Conscience
For this stage it might be helpful to think of this story as the town's confession. This section is what complicates things for the town's conscience. The town was horrible to Miss Emily when she started dating Homer Barron. They wanted to hold her to the southern lady ideals her forbearers had mapped out for her. She was finally able to break free when her father died, but the town won't let her do it. When they can't stop her from dating Homer themselves, they sick the cousins on her.
Climax
"For Rats"
Even though this story seems all jumbled up chronologically, the climax comes roughly in the middle of the story, lending the story a smooth, symmetrical feel. According to Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat, one which noble Miss Emily would have felt perfectly in the right to exterminate. Yet, she also wanted to hold tight to the dream that she might have a normal life, with love and a family. When she sees that everybody – the townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and even Homer himself – is bent on messing up her plans, she has an extreme reaction. That's why, for us, the climax is encapsulated in the image of the skull and crossbones on the arsenic package and the warning, "For rats."
Suspense
Deadly Gossip
As with the climax, Faulkner follows a traditional plot structure, at least in terms of the story of Emily and Homer. Emily buys the arsenic, and at that moment the information is beamed into the brains of the townspeople. This is one of the nastiest sections. The town is in suspense over whether they are married, soon will be, or never will be. Their reactions range from murderous, to pitying, to downright interference. We also learn that Homer Barron was last seen entering the residence of Miss Emily Grierson on the night in question. So, we can be in suspense about what happened to him, though by the time we can appreciate that this is something to be suspenseful about, we already know what happened.
Denouement
The Next 40 Years
At this point, we've already been given a rough outline of Emily's life, beginning with her funeral, going back ten years to when the "newer generation" came to collect the taxes, and then back another thirty some odd years to the death of Emily's father, the subsequent affair with Homer, and the disappearance of Homer. The story winds down by filling us in on Miss Emily's goings on in the 40 years between Homer's disappearance and Emily's funeral. Other than the painting lessons, her life during that time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.
Conclusion
The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the Hair
The townspeople enter the bedroom that's been locked for 40 years, only to find the rotting corpse of Homer Barron

Rip Van Winkle
By Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2006
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.......At the foot of the Catskill Mountains of New York was a picturesque village founded by Dutch colonists. Approaching it, one would see gabled homes with smoke curling up from the chimneys and shingle roofs reflecting the sunlight.
.......A simple, easygoing man named Rip Van Winkle lived in this village, in a weather-beaten house, at the time when New York was an English colony. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who served with distinction under Peter Stuyvesant in his struggles against Swedish settlers at Fort Christina (in present-day Delaware).
.......Because he was kind and gentle, Rip was popular with all of his neighbors. Children especially loved him, for he would play with them, make them toys, and tell them stories. No one had a cross word for Rip–except his wife, who, taking advantage of his meekness, regularly nagged him. Her treatment of him earned Rip the sympathy of other wives.
.......His only weak point was his inability to work for profit. It was not that he lacked patience or perseverance; for, as the narrator points out, “He would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble.” Moreover, he was always ready to help a neighbor with hard work and frequently ran errands and did odd jobs for housewives. But when it came time to tend his own farm and keep up his own property, he was of little use. Fences would collapse, a cow would run off, and rain would fall at the very moment he decided to work. The only plants that thrived on his farm were weeds. Consequently, he had the least productive and least attractive farm in the area.
.......One of his children, little Rip, seemed to take after his father. Not only did he look like the elder Rip but he also wore Rip’s hand-me-down clothes, including a pair of galligaskins (loose-fitting trousers) which he would continually hitch up with one hand.
.......Dame Van Winkle ceaselessly browbeat Rip for his failings, saying he was bringing the family to ruin. Rip would shrug and go outside, out of range of her scolding tongue. She treated his dog, Wolf, the same way, and Wolf began to resemble Rip in submissiveness. Rip often sought refuge with a village group that convened on a bench in front of an inn to gossip, tell stories, and on one occasion discuss events reported in a newspaper left behind by a traveler. The village schoolmaster, Derrick Van Brummel, would read the newspaper accounts. Old Nicholas Vedder, the owner of the inn, was the gray eminence of this group, guiding its thought and conversation even though he did little more than smoke his pipe and shift his position on the bench to remain in the shade of a tree. Unfortunately for Rip, Dame Van Winkle would sometimes come to the inn for him and haul him off, all the while her tongue lashing him and his compatriots, including Vedder.
.......To escape his wife and the drudgery of his farm, Rip would sometimes head into the woods with Wolf and his gun. One day, high in the Catskill Mountains, he hunted squirrels, firing one shot after another. Hours later, tired from all the activity, he decided to lie down for a rest on a green knoll overlooking the rich forests and the Hudson River in the distance. When evening neared, he got up to return home, heaving a sigh at the thought of Dame Van Winkle and the terror of her tongue. At that moment, a man came up the mountain, calling out Rip’s name. Rip and Wolf both came to attention. As the man neared, Rip noticed that he was short and squat, with a beard and bushy hair, and wore old-fashioned Dutch clothes with buttons down the sides of his breeches. He was carrying a keg–probably liquor, Rip thought–and beckoned for Rip to help him. Always ready to assist others, Rip did so. As they ascended the mountain, Rip heard rumbling, like thunder, coming from a ravine. After they passed through it, they came to a hollow bordered by cliffs with overhanging trees; it resembled an amphitheater. There, Rip saw bearded men–all dressed like his companion and all of odd appearance, one with a large head and one with a large nose–playing ninepins. They neither spoke nor smiled. When they rolled their balls toward the pins, Rip again heard peals of thunder.
.......Upon the arrival of Rip, the players stopped and stared at him, unnerving him. His companion opened the keg and emptied it into flagons, then motioned for Rip to serve the players, which he did. After the strange men resumed their game, Rip began to feel at ease and decided to sample the brew. It was excellent. He drank another, then another and another. By and by, the liquor had a heavy effect, and he drifted into a deep sleep.
.......When he woke up to a sunny morning, he was on the same green knoll upon which he rested when he first saw the man with the keg. His mind reviewed the events of the night before–the men, the ninepins, the liquor. Dame Van Winkle would give him a severe scolding this time. He reached out for his gun but was surprised to find that its barrel was rusted and its stock eaten away by worms. Perhaps those bowlers had stolen his gun and replaced it with a sorry old firelock. Wolf was nowhere to be found. When he arose to return to the place of the previous night’s revels to look for Wolf and retrieve his gun, he discovered that he was stiff in the joints.
“These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.”
.......However, the path he had walked with the strange man was now a mountain stream. Moreover, at the place where he entered the ravine, there was now only a wall of rock. Dumfounded, he returned to the village but was further puzzled when he saw people he did not recognize, all wearing strange fashions. Stroking his chin in bewilderment, he discovered that he had a beard a foot long.
.......The village was larger than when he left it, with more people. He saw strange houses with strange names over the doors. Dogs barked at him and children made fun of him. When he reached his house, he saw an old, deteriorating dwelling with broken windows and a collapsed roof. An old dog outside–was it Wolf?–growled at him. Inside, he looked about but found only emptiness. Immediately, he walked over to the inn–but it was gone. In its place was a ramshackle building with these words painted on the door: “The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.” There were men outside–but none that he recognized. One man was speaking loudly about “rights of citizens–election–members of Congress–liberty–Bunker’s Hill–heroes of ’76–and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.”
.......The men gathered around him and eyed him, for he was a strange sight to them. Women and children from the village also came to look at the peculiar man with the long beard and odd clothes. One man asked him how he voted. (Apparently, it was election day.) Another asked whether he was a Federal or a Democrat. A third man with a cane, seeing the old gun, asked whether Rip had come to the village to start a riot. Rip told them, ““I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!” At that, they declared him a Tory and a spy.
.......The man with the cane calmed the others down and inquired again why Rip had come to the village. Rip assured him he meant no harm, then inquired where his neighbors were, naming them one by one: Nicholas Vedder, Brom Dutcher, Van Brummel the schoolmaster. Vedder has been dead 18 years, Rip was told. Dutcher went off to war and never returned. Van Brummel, too, went off to war, attained the rank of general, and got himself elected to Congress. All these replies puzzled Rip.
.......Then he said, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?” One man replied, “Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”
.......The fellow looked exactly like Rip and even wore ragged clothes. When a man asked Rip his name, he said he did not know, for he now doubted his own identity. A woman named Judith Gardenier came up just then holding a child named Rip. When Rip asked her who her father was, she replied, “Ah, poor man, his name was Rip Van Winkle; it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since—his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.” She also mentioned that her mother had died when she suffered a broken blood vessel shouting at a peddler. Rip then identified himself.
.......“I am your father!” cried he–“Young Rip Van Winkle once–old Rip Van Winkle now!–Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle!”
.......An old woman stepped forward for a closer look at him and confirmed that he was indeed Rip Van Winkle. When she asked where he had been for twenty years, Rip told his story to everyone. The people, skeptical, winked at one another or shook their heads. It happened that the oldest inhabitant of the village, Peter Vanderdonk, was coming up the road, and he was asked for his opinion. He immediately identified Rip. In addition, it was a fact, the narrator reports him as saying, that strange beings had always roamed the Catskills and that Henrdrick Hudson, the discoverer of the region, visited the area every twenty years with the crew of his ship, the Half-Moon, to “keep a guardian eye upon the river.” The narrator further reports that Vanderdonk’s father once observed Hudson and the crew playing ninepins in the mountains and that Vanderdonk himself once heard the thunderous sound of their rolling balls.
.......The crowd then disbanded. Rip went to live with his daughter and her farmer husband. Rip’s son–the man leaning against the tree–had been hired to work the farm but spent all his time on his own interests. Rip went for walks, took up his old habits, and even found a few of his old friends. However, he preferred the company of the younger generation.
.......At an age when he could do as he pleased, which was to say nothing, he began sitting on the bench in front of the Doolittle's Hotel. There the villagers looked upon him as one of their patriarchs. In time, he learned that their had been a revolutionary war in which the country broke from England and that he was now a citizen of the United States. Overall, he was a happy man and was especially pleased to be free of the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle.
.......From time to time, he told his story to strangers and eventually everyone in the village knew all the details by heart. Some inhabitants still doubted the tale, but old-timers swore by it and even claimed, whenever they heard a thunderstorm, that Hendrick Hudson and his crew were playing ninepins again.
Setting

The story begins about five or six years before the American Revolution and ends twenty years later. The action takes place in a village in eastern New York, near the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. The river was named after Englishman Henry Hudson, who explored it in 1609. The Catskill Mountains were named after Kaaterskill, the Dutch word for a local stream, Wildcat Creek. The Catskills contain many other streams, as well as lakes, waterfalls, and gorges.

Characters
Rip Van Winkle: Meek, easygoing, ne’er-do-well resident of the village who wanders off to the mountains and meets strange men playing ninepins.
Dame Van Winkle: Rip’s nagging wife.
Nicholas Vedder: Owner of a village inn where menfolk congregate.
Derrick Van Brummel: Village schoolmaster.
Wolf: Rip’s dog.
Man Carrying Keg Up the Mountain: Spirit of Englishman Henry Hudson, explorer of the Hudson River.
Ninepin Bowlers: Henry Hudson’s crewmen from his ship, the Half-Moon.
Brom Dutcher: Neighbor of Rip who went off to war while Rip was sleeping.
Old Woman: Woman who identifies Rip when he returns to the village after his sleep.
Peter Vanderdonk: Oldest resident of the village. He confirms Rip’s identity and cites evidence indicating Rip’s strange tale is true.
Judith Gardenier: Rip’s married daughter. She takes her father in after he returns from his sleep.
Mr. Gardenier: Judith’s husband, a farmer.
Rip Van Winkle II: Rip’s ne’er-do-well son.
Rip Van Winkle III: Rip’s infant grandchild. Its mother is Judith Gardenier.
Van Schaick: Village parson.
Jonathan Doolittle: Owner of the Union Hotel, the establishment that replaced the village inn.
The Catskill Mountains: See Personification.
Various Men, Women, and Children of the Village

Type of Work, Source, and Publication Information
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story–one of America's most beloved–based on German folk tales. It was first published in a collection of Irving's works called The Sketch Book (1819-1820).
Themes
Change With Continuity and Preservation of Tradition
After Rip awakens from his long sleep and returns to the village, he does not recognize the people he encounters. But not only their faces are new but also their fashions and the look of the village: It is larger, with rows of houses he had never seen. His own house is in shambles now with no one living in it, and the inn he frequented is a hotel. His wife and old Vedder are dead. Others left the village and never came back. Everything is different, it seems; nothing is as it was. There has even been a revolutionary war in which America gained its independence from England and became a new country. However, when Rip looks beyond the village, he sees that the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains are exactly the same as they were before his sleep. He also begins to encounter people who knew him long ago: first, the old woman, then the old man, Peter Vanderdonk, who testifies to the truth of Rip’s strange tale about the ninepin bowlers he met in the mountains. At this point in the story, Irving’s main theme begins to emerge: Although wrenching, radical changes are sometimes necessary to move society forward, such changes must not eradicate old ways and traditions entirely. Real, lasting change is an amalgam of the old and new. New builds on the foundations of the old. There must be continuity. So it is that old Vanderdonk, in confirming Rip’s tale, says he himself has heard the thunder of ninepin bowlers, who are the crewmen of The Half-Moon, the ship Henry Hudson captained in his exploration of the Hudson River. It seems that their spirits return to the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains every twenty years to keep a “guardian eye” on the river and its environs. Hudson was an Englishman, yes, but his association with his overthrown country does not mean the values he represents must die with the revolution. Rip also sees his son, Rip II, now a grown man, who looks just like him, and is reunited with his daughter, now a grown woman, who is holding an infant–Rip III. Thus, though, change has come to the village, their remain links with the past; there is continuity. New generations come along that bring change, but old values and traditions–as well as family lines–remain alive and thriving. And, every now and then, thunder rumbles in the Catskills when Hudson and his crew play ninepins.

The Magic of the Imagination

Irving’s story suggests that human imagination can can give society charming, humorous stories that become part of an enduring, magical folklore. Today, the Catskill and Hudson Valley regions well remember Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane–the hero of another Irving story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”–as if they were real persons. A bridge across the Hudson has even been named after Rip. Sunnyside, Irving’s Tarrytown home between 1835 and 1859, is a major tourist attraction in the Hudson Valley.

Climax

The climax of the story occurs when the townspeople recognize Rip after he returns to his village.

The Game of Ninepins

Ninepins is a game (or sport) in which a participant rolls wooden balls on a lane in an attempt to knock down nine bottle-shaped wooden pins arranged in the shape of a diamond. The participant may bowl up to three balls to knock down all the pins. Ninepins is similar to the modern sport of bowling.

Personfication: The Catskills as a Character

At the outset of his story, Washington Irving uses personification to invest the Catskill Mountains with human qualities. Irving tells us in Paragraph 1 that they are part of a “family,” the Appalachian family. And they are a proud, majestic member of that family, “lording it over the surrounding country.” They are also active rather than passive, reacting to the weather and the seasons with changes in their “magical hues and shapes.” In fair weather, “they are clothed in blue and purple.” But sometimes, even though the sky is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
Making the mountains come alive enables them to become mysterious and unpredictable; they may even play tricks on those who venture within their confines.
Author
"Rip Van Winkle" was written by Washington Irving (1783-1859), a lawyer who pursued a writing career after he discovered that practicing law did not interest him. At a time when most Americans read British authors almost exclusively, Irving proved that American writers could compete with their British counterparts. He was among the first American writers who gained an international reputation by writing short stories. Irving had a special talent for creating a magical, fairytale quality in his tales–notably "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"–and thus helped shape the folklore of early America. His elegant writing style, full of gentle humor and vivid descriptions, continues to enchant modern readers. It is likely that his engaging stories will remain popular for ages to come.