Sleepy Hollow: American Anxiety Via American Gothic
The early Americans lived in an America that many are unfamiliar with in this day. Early America was a fierce wilderness rife with uncharted territories and much uncertainty. Thus, there was no doubt that early Americans felt a great deal of anxiety: anxiety about their futures and anxiety about their decision to leave England. Published in 1820, the story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving is a classic example of American gothic fiction and is a strong representation of the anxiety of the early colonists. Many of the supernatural elements of the short story "Sleepy Hollow" demonstrate a sense of fear about what is, and a fear about the environment, along with an aggravated apprehension about what was to come.
The sense of grimness and gloom is present throughout Irving's story and are tools which he uses to set the tone for the supernatural elements. However, these environmental tones are largely used as literary tools to help manifest the palpable anxiety of these early Americans. Irving clearly distinguishes himself from European Gothic writers who use castles, monasteries and comparable places as settings for their stories, by choosing a dark forest as his setting instead. The bulk of the story occurs on the bank of the Tappan Zee River at a small harbor on a...
First, evil in Sleepy Hollow is more equating with a satirical view that, in this case, evil is a more benign humor, bumbling, caustic in disrupting the town, and, as it was in Ancient Greek and Roman drama, simply more of an irritant than planned destruction. Focusing again on the time period, our first introduction to this theme is one of Dutch New York against Urban New England. The Dutch
As the two protagonists battle wits, a subplot becomes evident: choices must be made between the old order and the new order. The sturdy Brom Bones, with his practical, quaint Dutch upbringing, is a cog in a hole (or the whole, that is the village). Brom fits Tarry Town, and his rowdy mischievous nature functions as a pleasant diversion in the quiet little village. Brom represents the virtues of the
The only difference is how the legend is carried and manipulated through subsequent generations. Unfortunately, such a sanguine point-of-view does not hold up either. Because the legend itself is regional in nature, the tale of the headless horseman conveys the sinister application of rhetorical devices used to exile the spirit of Americanism. If it were a legend, then the legend would have carried out beyond its geographical area. Moreover, the
Ichabod Crane Tim Burton's 1999 film adaptation of Washington Irving's 1819 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is hardly a faithful or literal adaptation. R.B. Palmer, in his introduction to Nineteenth-Century American Literature on Screen, is rather chilly in his dismissal of Burton's adaptation; he claims that a simple survey of Hollywood adaptations overall reveals that a number of major figures, most prominently Washington Irving…had never or rarely (and then
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