Change is good

Change is Good “Rip Van Winkle” is Washington Irving’s most famous short story. Irving became “a classic during his own lifetime” because his works of literature were so well written and liked by all (Washington). Rip starts the story as unhappy and changes after a mysterious night in the woods making him miss twenty years. While he was asleep the Revolutionary War happened, and America had separated from Great Britain. In “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving takes the main character, Rip, from a static to dynamic character, symbolizing the rebirth of America after the Revolutionary War. In the beginning of “Rip Van Winkle”, Rip is the type of man who would do anything for anyone, and is the type of person “who would rather starve on a penny, than work for a pound;” because Dame Van Winkle, his wife, is always nagging in his ear about work at home (20). Even though Dame thinks Rip is lazy, he “was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own,” that is just the type of person he was (20). Rip being a “hen-pecked husband,” spent most of his days in the village square catching up on “village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories,” instead of being at home working on his farm of which “he declared the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country” (19, 20, 21). After Rip wakes up in the woods, which he later finds out, was twenty years, there is a big personality change in him. After people realize who he is, Rip gets told that his wife had passed in the time he was gone; “there was a drop of comfort” as if he can finally be happy and do what he wants without her always arguing with him (30). His daughter and her husband let Rip live with them, and he actually did his part around the house unlike when Dame Van Winkle would ask him to do things.
In “Rip Van Winkle” there are two main symbols that feed off of each other throughout the story. Dame Van Winkle’s character is mean and rude to her husband like how King George III