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(2018
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2018 #3: Web Highlights (Index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Ruth Brown
Washington Irving in the Modern Era
As I began to read previous
students’ essays to prepare for this web highlights assignment, I was focused on
trying to find new ideas and seeing the texts through new perspectives. I really
wanted to grow in my knowledge of what we have been discussing in class, and I
found a common theme in the essays I was reading that really stood out to me and
grabbed my attention. It is the idea of these texts in the modern era and what
they mean to people reading them now. This is a point that has been discussed in
class, but that I feel I have never understood or grasped a clear answer of. In
the essays I read, I particularly found new insights to the readings of
Washington Irving’s stories Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow and
how I can apply these stories to my life as a modern reader.
At the beginning of her
article, “The American Renaissance: Advice for the Modern Age,” Waggett states
that the writings of the authors of the American Renaissance can “sound as
familiar to the American reader as the words of a parent, and yet, just as
children often disregard the advice of their parents at the most crucial times
in life, so modern people seem to neglect the teachings of these great writers
when they are most needed.” What caught my eye in her essay is how she makes an
interesting connection between the character of Rip Van Winkle and the American
spirit. She states that “Washington Irving’s
Rip Van Winkle,
when read as running parallel to the American Revolution, yields some commentary
about what it means to be American in any age.” I had not previously thought of
Van Winkle as a personification of the American spirit. Waggett analyzes the
description Irving wrote of Van Winkle and shows how the descriptive terms
represent different aspects of the American spirit. Some of the examples she
gives are that Van Winkle is “simple” corresponding with the idea of the
American spirit belonging to the “common” man and that he is “good natured” “an
innate quality of amiability that is independent of circumstance, and so
possible in all Americans.” A negative aspect is that “Rip was ready to attend
to anybody’s business but his own” and Waggett notes that “Irving may have been
satirizing Americans’ tendency to have great concern for the affairs of others
to a flaw by focusing on large-scale moralistic issues while neglecting their
own matters.” The idea of a character representing or symbolizing something
specific is something that I don’t normally look for, but it is a wonderful
device to use that can often help the writer and reader be near and far enough
away to present a balanced overview.
Another essay that began with a
thought-provoking sentence was Timothy Morrow’s “The Dark Unknown and its
Welcoming Nature.” He asked the question "Does literature transcend dusty books
and faded ink into the daily lives of the mundane individual?” Throughout his
essay he explains the terms sublime and gothic, and writes that it is these
attributes of the American Renaissance writings that make them relatable to the
modern reader. It is his examination of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that
led me to a new perspective. He writes, “while The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
is sometimes viewed as a cartoonish Halloween spooky story, there is a universal
truth about seeing and being afraid of a dark unexplainable figure in the
shadows.” When I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for class, it didn’t
live up to the spooky, scary story I thought it was going to be. Instead, it
seemed quite peaceful and uneventful. Looking at it through Morrow’s essay
though, reminds me how the dark and unexplainable is utterly frightening and how
universal it is no matter where you live or what time period it is.
George Kelly also concentrates
on the universality of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the essay
“Sleepless in Sleepy Hollow.” This is the essay that spoke to me the most and
really gave me a new perspective for reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Kelly explores the idea of correspondence in the text and parallels it with his
own experience with generalized anxiety disorder. As someone who also struggles
daily with anxiety, I had never thought to use that as a way to understand the
term correspondence and what it means to project one’s emotions onto the
surrounding world. I felt like something clicked in my brain when Kelly
explained that the The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is more psychologically
disturbing than outright terrifying. It is the power of fear and our own mind
that is the real villain of the story, rather than the headless horseman.
All three essays helped me gain
a clearer perspective on a modern day reading of Washington Irving’s stories. I
feel as though I have widened my knowledge in the class on the universality of
using the sublime, gothic, and correspondence. I have also gained some new ideas
on analyzing themes as a personification through characters and the power a
psychological story can possess over its readers. Overall, I feel as though I
understand and relate more to Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow than I did when I first read them for class.
