Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle” as romantic hero

In Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle”, Rip Van Winkle portrays the element of the classic American romantic hero through his youthful qualities, innocence and pure purpose, sense of honor, knowledge of people and life, his interaction with nature, and quest for a higher truth.

First, though Rip is a fairly old man, however he portrays youthful qualities. An example is: "The children of the village to would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles and told them long stories of ghosts witches and Indians.”

 

The second characteristic of Rip is his innocence and pure purpose. His innocence is shown in: "the great error in Rips composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor." He just wants to be helpful without making his own profit.  

Also the thing that depicts Rip as a romantic hero is his knowledge of people and life. “he would never refuse to assist a neighbor...” Rip knows how to make the people in his village happy by helping them out with stuff. 

The fourth characteristic that Rip shows is his sense of honor. For an example, Rip doesn’t make fun of the old men with the stories they are telling he just respects them and honors them.  “Here they used to sit on the shade through a long lazy summers day talking listlessly over village gossip or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing.”

 

Another characteristic of a romantic hero is that Rip loves nature. When he is feeling upset or stressed he will go into nature to relax. An example is: "he would carry a fowling piece on his shoulder for hours together trudging through woods and swamps and up hill and down dale to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons." This shows that Rip will go into the wilderness for hours just to enjoy it.

The last thing that makes Rip a romantic hero is his quest for higher truth. After waking up, by finding new friends and meeting back up with some old ones Rip has found the higher purpose in life. " Rip now resumed his old walks and habits he soon found many of his former cronies though all rather worse for the wear and tear of time and preferred making friends amount the rising generation with he soon grew into great favor."