UGC NET English Literature Previous Year Question Paper Sept 2020 Fully Solved PDF Download

UGC NET English Literature Previous Year Question Paper Sept 2020: Click Here to Download

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Rip Van Winkle | Washington Irving | Short Summary | PDF Download

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v Rip Van Winkle is a short story by American author Washington Irving and it was first published in 1819.
v It follows a very lazy Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen.
v A Dutchman is a male member of the Dutch people, native to the Netherlands or descendant of one.
v He drinks their alcoholic drink and falls asleep for 20 years in the Catskill Mountains.
v When he wakes up, he realises the world has changed a lot and he has missed the American Literature.
v It was published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
v While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, “When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills.”
v Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War in a village at the foot of New York’s Catskill Mountains where Rip Van Winkle lives.
v One autumn day, he wanders into the mountains with his dog named Wolf to escape his wife’s nagging.
v He hears his name called out and sees a man wearing antiquated Dutch clothing carrying a keg, a small barrel up the mountain needing help.
v Together, the men and Wolf proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of thunderous noises, a group of ornately, complicatedly dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins, a bowling game.
v Van Winkle does not ask who they are or how they know his name.
v He instead begins to drink some of the liquor and soon falls asleep.
v When he wakes up on the mountain, he discovers shocking changes, his musket gun is rotting and rusty, his beard is a foot long and his dog is nowhere to be found.
v He returns to his village, where he is unable to recognize anyone.
v He arrives just after an election and people ask him how he voted.
v Never having voted in his life, he says he is a faithful subject of King George III, unaware that the American Revolution has taken place and that America was now independent nation.
v He nearly gets himself into trouble with the people of the town until one elderly woman recognises him as the long-lost Rip Van Winkle.
v He saw that King George’s portrait on the inn’s sign has been replaced with one of George Washington, the founding father and the first president of the United States.
v He learnt that most of his friends were killed fighting in the American Revolution.
v He is also disturbed to find another man called Rip Van Winkle, his son, now grown up.
v Van Winkle also discovers that his wife died some time ago but is not saddened by the news.
v He learns that the men whom he met in the mountains are rumoured to be ghosts of Henry Hudson’s crew from his ship the Halve Maen.
v Hudson was an English explorer and navigator who explored parts of the Arctic Ocean and north-eastern North America.
v He also realises that he has been away from his village for nearly 20 years.
v His grown daughter takes him in and he resumes his usual idleness and laziness.
v Dutch settlers, especially children, sincerely believe in this strange tale, who say that whenever thunder is heard, the men in the mountains must be playing nine-pins.