Analysis Of Erving s Rip Van Winkle And Mason

In this paper, I will be explaining Washington â€Å"Erving’s Rip Van Winkle† and Mason Locke Weems’s â€Å"Life of Washington† cultural, social, and historical context. In the â€Å"Life of Washington†, Weems shows how George Washington was raised and how he acted as a child. However, in â€Å"Rip Van Winkle†, Irving tells a story of a man who slept through the Revolutionary War and wakes to find a new country. These stories show the problem of how the United States of America was seen in the eyes of foreign countries and how Americans wanted to be seen. In order to solve this problem, Weems decided to show the people how an American should act. Irving’s solution was to show how the nation appeared to an immigrant by writing his book in the eyes of an outsider. These solutions can help bring a sense of pride and recollection to the American people and the world. To begin with, these two pieces of literature hold a lot of information that will need to be broken down. In Washington Irving’s ‘Rip Van Winkle†, the main character, Rip Van Winkle, was a farmer who was a favorite in his little Dutch home town up in the Catskill mountains. One day while hiking up in the mountains, Rip came upon (unknowingly) the ghosts of the Dutch explorer Henry Hudson and his crew who offer him some â€Å"moonshine† that puts him to sleep for twenty years. When Rip Van Winkle wakes, he comes to find that everything is different. When he gets back to his town, he finds that he does not