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LITR 4232 American
Renaissance 2010 Student Midterm Samples 2. Short essay (4-6 paragraphs) on 1 of 2 options (or combinations as inspired) :
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Brittany Fletcher
2A. The Headless Boxer
“All
the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came
crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars
seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from
his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was moreover approaching
the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In
the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant
above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark.
Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary
trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air.”
Washington Irving’s passage from The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow left a lasting and hypnotic impression on me. After
I read the story I could not help but reminisce on many memories I have as a
young adolescent and the many lengths I went to in order to scare myself. I
realized by reading this story that I am still in love with finding
opportunities to scare myself. The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow has been around for many years and the story of Ichabod
Crane and the headless horsemen is still immensely popular today, but why? Why
the story is so popular still remains as a question today. I became fascinated
by this question and it, along with the language used, is why this story and
particular passage made such an impression on me. The language and connections
made from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
are a few of the many reasons the headless horsemen still continues to “ride”
through literature today.
One of the popular reasons of the timeless story of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is its
language use. The whole text is filled with a successful mixture of Reason and
Romance. For the purpose of the passage I selected, the language is filled with
Gothic elements. The passage takes place in a “haunted space”, the woods. The
“Wilderness Gothic” really plays into the passage by use of description when
Irving writes, “the night grew darker and darker” which brings that sense of
fear of the unknown where we cannot see what lies in front of us. The forest is
a dark place from the shade of the trees and large trunks and the language of
this particular passage brings out the Gothic use in the overall work. There is
a great sense of imagery in the beginning of the passage, “All the stories of
ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his
recollection.” This sentence also shows the meaning of the term correspondence
where a thought can either be born in the mind or affected by the outside
environment around a person. The thought of being afraid begins in Ichabod’s
mind. He is in the woods late at night and the thoughts of evil creatures come
creeping into his consciousness and kidnap rationality. Although the headless
horsemen appears and comes after Ichabod, the fear comes from Ichabod because he
thought of evil things beforehand. Correspondence is the connection between
thought and the atmosphere around. This passage gives great description into the
“thought” that gives birth to fear first. The passage’s language use gives
justice to the Gothic imagery and satisfies the addictive fear that I tend to
crave and look for since childhood.
I can relate personally to correspondence as it took place for me very recently
when I spent the night over at a friend’s house. We had spent time earlier in
the evening watching The Sixth Sense
for some random reason. Around 2:00 in the morning I woke up and began to hear
rattling and creaking noises. Almost
immediately my mind began to wonder in the darkness of the room where in the
world that noise was coming from and what was making it. I began to wonder maybe
if I was going to start seeing dead people! As ludicrous as this thought may
seem, the fear became very real to me. The noise continued and it was there in
the dark of the night that I decided I was going to run to the other room and
wake up my friend. I counted to three and as I was rounding the corner I then
found my friend's very large Boxer, Maggie, eating the empty pizza box that was
ordered for dinner earlier that evening!
Although, I fortunately did not disappear like Ichabod Crane from my friend's
“headless canine,” the fear had been born inside my thoughts first. The story of
Sleepy Hollow becomes addicting because of the rich everlasting language that
evokes the fear we all have in one form or another. We love the thought of being
scared until we are actually consumed by fear so badly that it becomes
regrettable. These stories, like The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, portray our ways of vicariously being a part of
that fear without having to actually endure it ourselves; we just feel it
through memories or fantasies. I connected with the passage because I enjoyed
the gothic elements and the classic feel the story gave.
The reason the story of Ichabod Crane and the headless horsemen is so
captivating is because it lives on even in the title,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Legend
means an old story that has been passed down for generations and presented as
history even though it is most likely untrue. Irving knew that this one story
would stick with people because it is so entrancing in the gothic language use
and ideas.
