Analysis of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Essay Example

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Q1 Discuss the significance of the “Postscript” of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to the short story as a whole. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of the two most popular short stories by Irving Washington, an American author who lived between 1783 and 1859. The short story was published, together with another of his enduring short story entitled Rip Van Winkle, in a volume called The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819 in the United States. The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow is set in New York, in a town called Sleepy Hollow, particularly in a valley called Tarry Town near Catskill Mountains. It is the story of a character named Ichabod Crane, a Connecticut Yankee who came to the sleepy town and who has big dreams of bagging the town’s most eligible bachelorette, Katrina van Hassel, daughter of the town’s richest farmer and partake of the vast property of her inheritance and realize the American dream. The story is ended with a Postscript entitled Found in the Handwriting of Mr. Knickerbocker. This postscript acts as a concluding statement to the short story where the narrator clarifies what the story is all about and the lesson that can be gleaned from it. In addition, a character suspiciously similar to the short story’s main character, although older and wealthier, appeared. The Postscript to the Legend of the Sleepy Hollow shows the narrator winding up his story to the audience who are all wealthy New Yorkers, including a “tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eyebrows” who was obviously a man of fortune and success and who demanded to know the moral of the story. The narrator gave him three: first, “That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleasures – provided we will but take a joke as we find it;” second, “That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding of it” and; third and as a conclusion, “for a county schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in the state.” All of these answers do not really make sense perhaps and are actually confusing which is perhaps the very intention of the narrator – to confuse the person asking. This is because the narrator, according to the book The Cambridge History of American Literature, was actually trying to make the point that “literature, in short, has no practical purpose or lesson to teach; its value is that it entertains without regard to use” (Berkovitch & Patell 1997 p 672). However, the Postscript, where Crane reappeared as an older and wealthier man and a member of a New York corporation can also be viewed as the ultimate triumph of the city life as opposed to the country, or civilization to the backwoods. This would negate the earlier triumph of the country life, represented by Brom Bones, when the latter succeeded in expelling Crane, who represented the city and urban life, through a ruse that made use of Crane’s own imaginative mind. In addition, the narrator’s answers would eventually make sense as the confrontation with the headless horseman was merely used by Crane to exit from the Sleepy Hollow as his American dream had been earlier shattered anyway by an implied rejection of the daughter of a rich farmer upon whose fortune he built his dream around. To explain these two victories, an analysis and explanation of the short story is relevant at this point. The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow is a story of conflicts and contrasts. One such conflict is between the country and the city as represented by Ichabod Crane who came from Connecticut and a local country hero Brom Van Brunt whose herculean and flexibility of limbs had earned him the moniker Brom Bones. Ichabod Crane, is a Yankee who came to the town of Sleepy Hollow to find fortune by teaching children and ingratiating himself with the quiet and largely superstitious population. Sleepy Hollow is described as a sleepy town peopled by correspondingly sleepy population who were contented with what they have and have no desire to make changes to their way of living. Crane, meanwhile, dreams of the American dream where he could amass his own fortune. He sets his sight high by courting the daughter of a very rich farmer of the town, the only heiress to her father’s properties. His dreams and its realizations are however thwarted by the nemesis of what Crane represents: Brom Bones and the country and resistance to change. Everything about these two personalities is in contrast to each other as a city contrasts to the countryside. Whilst Crane comes from a big city, is sly and has ambitions to be rich specifically through the fortune that Katrina Van Hassel would inherit from her father, Brom Bones is the country hero who is all brawn, brute strength and uncouthness. Whilst Crane is a scarecrow look-alike with tall, lanky frame, Bones is handsome although arrogant and coarse. Bones likewise desired Katrina perhaps for a purer reason than the cunning Crane. Crane’s vivid imagination and propensity for the supernatural is well known to every person in Sleepy Hollow because he himself often tells such stories to gatherings which made him popular with the folks who are naturally superstitious. It is this very rich imagination for the supernatural that would finally drive him out of the town. One of Crane’s favorite pastimes is reading a book full of folk tales and superstitious beliefs. One popular folk belief in the area is that of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow who, as the popular belief goes, is a ghost of a Hessian trooper who fought in some revolutionary war, his head hit and severed by a cannon ball. He has thus since been seen in the area especially near the town’s church. It is this weakness and propensity which is cleverly used by the country hero Brom Bones to finally expel his rival from the sleepy town of Sleepy Hollow. The head-on confrontation of these two worlds came one night when the father of Katrina Van Hassel gives a party at his farm and invites the country folks including Crane and Bones. Crane is seen leaving in a huff after talking to Katrina who probably finally turns him down. On his way home, Crane is met with the specter of the Headless Horseman who is actually Bones in disguise with a pumpkin in his hand as substitute for the horseman’s head. This sets off Crane on a run until the headless man hits him with the ‘head’ which struck his head. This incident is followed by Crane’s complete disappearance from the town although the superstitious folks would rather believe that he has been hijacked by the supernatural. In this finale, the country, resistance to change and brawn took and won over the city, change and brawn. The Postscript however would suggest another perspective assuming that the old wealthy man appearing as one of the New York Corporation audience is really Ichabod Crane, as his description seems to fit the character. Now old, but wealthy and worthy of respect and deference, Crane would, in this sense, seemed triumphant in the end. His success and reversal of fortune would justify the narrator’s seemingly nonsensical morals of the story: first, “That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleasures – provided we will but take a joke as we find it;” second, “That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding of it” and; third and as a conclusion, “for a county schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in the state.” All these three statements really amount to the same thing: that all situations in life can have its advantages even dire ones if and only if, a person can take that situation with humor. This implies that one should not compete with external forces that one does not have a chance with and that failures should be perceived as stepping stones to success. The proposition that Crane and all that he represented – city, change, and brain – ultimately won the battle that Bones represented – country, resistance to change and brawn – regardless that he is expelled at the end of the story by Bones’ ruse finds merit in the Postscript. It is more believable than not that Crane understands at the end that the Headless Horseman is a big lie and the headless horseman who ran after him was a real person in disguise after he awakens from the big bump given him by the supposed ‘head.’ In the broad daylight, he must have seen that what was thrown at him was a mere pumpkin and the fact that he was still alive belied all the tales about the headless horseman. Nevertheless, Crane decides to make an exit out of Sleepy Hollow, perhaps not because of fear but because he realizes that there is nothing for him to go back to after he is finally given the rejection by Katrina. He must have realized that his American dream cannot bear fruition in the town of Sleepy Hollow but elsewhere. This would therefore make all the narrator’s claims about the moral of the story true and meaningful to Ichabod Crane himself. References Bercovitch, Sacvan & Patell, Cyrus R. K. 1997, ‘The Cambridge History of American Literature: 1590-1820,’ Cambridge University Press. Irving, Washington 2006, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., Read More