Rip Van Winkle: Analysis of Main Ideas

Tyranny can be overcome in different ways.

One of the main preoccupations of the story is the act of overcoming tyrants, both real and perceived. Whether the person in question is a king, an overbearing ship's captain, or a wife, the characters in the story are trying to remove themselves from what they believe to be that person’s tyranny. For instance, Rip Van Winkle is working to overcome his wife’s many demands and the tyranny the narrator believes she imposes. Rip does not fight back when his wife yells at him, but he also does not do what she asks. He simply disappears and either wanders away or helps others. The work gets done or it does not. Rip gets what he wants, which is to be left alone.

Furthermore, the citizens of the town have, in Rip’s absence, fought a revolutionary war against the king of England. They have overthrown a government that they felt did not have their best interests at heart and have begun, as the narrative points out, holding elections for local office. They have chosen to make their own destiny, to succeed or fail on their own terms, and it all began with ousting a man they viewed as a tyrant.

Though the strange men in the woods are also involved with a tyrant, their situation differs from those of Rip and the villagers, as the strange men remained loyal to their tyrant and were themselves overcome. Historical record suggests that when Henry Hudson attempted to extend his exploration of the area by sailing further west, there was a mutiny involving most of his crew. Those who sided with Hudson were abandoned in the Catskills, doomed to joylessly reappear every twenty years as spirits. It is these unfortunate loyalists to Hudson that Rip encounters in the forest. Tyranny, within the story, is never rewarded.

Work is not a man's worth.

Throughout the story, Rip Van Winkle is not a man who considers his responsibilities important, but the story does not consider this a blemish on Rip's character. Instead of tending his farm or helping with chores, he would rather wander or fish or help others. In a place and time where effort is directly related to food and shelter, Rip seems dangerously derelict in his duties as a husband and father. In the modern view, Rip seems to be a person who has always wanted to be retired, even as a young man. He does not want to have to bother with conforming to society's expectations, nor does he want to have to do what he doesn't want to. His long nap, then, enables him to skip twenty years of adulthood and its responsibilities.

By sleeping through this period in his life, he arrives back in the village as an elder, someone from whom nothing is expected. He is no longer shirking his duties, as those duties have fallen to the next generation. He is able to assume the rewards of a long life without having lived one. He can tell stories and play with the town's children, which is what he has always been best equipped to do. Rather than being a useless husband and father, it is clear that Rip has always been suited to be a town elder, everyone's friendly uncle who can laugh and joke and tell stories while sitting in the sun with a pipe in his mouth while everyone else takes care of business. The narrator considers this to be a reasonable situation for Rip, and refuses to hold the idleness of his younger self against him.

History doesn’t necessarily reflect what happened.

Rip’s story is so fantastical and unlikely that it might be easily dismissed as preposterous, not just by the villagers who clamor to hear his tale throughout the years but by the reader as well. That being said, the question of whether Rip’s story is true or not is immaterial. Rip claims it happened, and whether others believe it or not, by telling his story over and over again, by incorporating it into the story of the town and its inhabitants, it becomes part of the area’s history. “Rip Van Winkle,” then, is a narrative about how stories and history aren’t necessarily one and the same but can ultimately blend to the point where it’s hard to differentiate one from the other.

The narrator insists on the truth of Rip's story by claiming to be relating it faithfully. In the postscript to the story, however, it is revealed that the narrator knows Rip personally, which might serve to reinforce its authenticity but might also force the reader to reconsider how much the narrator can be trusted. Nevertheless, by repeating the story, by insisting on its truth, eventually the story stands on its own as part of the accepted version of events, regardless of whether or not it actually happened.

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