Thankfully, one elderly woman recalls Rip as her former neighbor, and Peter Vanderdonk, the oldest and most knowledgeable man in the village, is able to both recognize Rip and verify his story.
Twenty years later, Rip wakes up and finds the American Revolution has been won, and only his old friend Peter Vanderdonk recognizes him. With his wife dead, Rip moves in with their daughter and returns to idling away his time at the inn. The Catskill Mountains : See Personification. Various Men, Women, and Children of the Village.
Type of Work, Source, and Publication Information. It was first published in a collection of Irving's works called The Sketch Book 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. Real, lasting change is an amalgam of the old and new. New builds on the foundations of the old. There must be continuity. 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.
One day, Rip wanders off into the woods to escape his nagging wife. Hearing thunder, he unwittingly follows the ghosts of Henry Hudson's men deep into the wilderness. As the men play nine-pins, Rip imbibes a "magic potion" - quietly falling into a deep sleep. He wakens 20 years later, his beard grown long and his beloved dog, Wolf, nowhere to be found. Rip makes his way back into the village and discovers that the American Revolution has taken place.
He is no longer recognizable, nor does he know any of the townspeople who greet him. Rip's luck holds out and it isn't long before he finds his place among his grown children — though much of his family has passed on — and resumes his habitual idleness. His tale is repeated and solemnly taken to heart by hen-pecked husbands who wish they could have shared in Rip's good fortune and slept through the atrocities of war.
From the pages of Irving's cautionary tale, the sense of adventure and intrigue have taken on a life of their own.
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