Supernatural elements in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle

Supernatural elements are the basic of this story. Even the story's setting is almost supernatural in itself. The Catskills are described as filled with "...magical hues and shapes..... when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits….." Supernatural elements are mostly found in the incident of Rip’s twenty years sleep which is described below. 

One autumn day, to escape his wife's nagging, Van Winkle wanders up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name called out [“As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”], Rip sees a man wearing antiquated Dutch clothing; he is carrying a keg up the mountain and requires help. “he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back.”

 Together, they proceed to a hollow in which Rip discovers the source of thunderous noises: a group of ornately dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins. “On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins.”  “What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest face, the most mysterious silence...” “As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together”

Rip does not ask who they are or how they know his name “He obeyed with fear and trembling”. Instead, he begins to drink some of their moonshine and soon falls asleep. Rip awakes in the morning to find that his dog is gone, his gun is rusted and he's had an abnormal amount of beard-growth over night. Eventually, after returning back to village, he comes to know that he slept for twenty years.

Later Rip learns that the men he met in the mountains are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew, which had vanished long ago as old Peter Vanderdonk confirmed “That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.”

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."

Relationship between Rip Van Winkle and his wife Dame Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle is a “simple, good-natured fellow” with a faithful dog, a son, a daughter, and a domineering wife Dame Van Winkle. Rip is a popular member of the village, but he is not as welcome by his wife because he is lazy and unproductive at home. In short, he is “ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own.”

His wife never lets him forget his responsibilities to the family, or the many ways he fails to fulfill them: “his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence.” Rip usually doesn’t argue with his wife: “He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing.”

In the eyes of Rip and his sympathetic neighbors, Dame Van Winkle is stern and unreasonable. The narrator calls Rip as “an obedient hen-pecked husband,” and places his wife in the category of “shrews,” calling her a “termagant,” or overbearing, wife: “A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.”

She treated his dog, Wolf, the same way: "Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray." 

Apparently, she finds fault with Rip because he does no profitable work, does not help around the house, and shows no interest in the well being of his children or his wife. One autumn day, Rip feels so oppressed by the haranguing of his wife that he escaped to the mountains.

How readers are to see Dame Van Winkle’s character is a central question in the story: Is she a shrew, or is her anger at her husband understandable? For Rip the answer is clear. When he returns to the village to find that his wife has died, he feels the news as “a drop of comfort.”  So in simple, their relationship isn’t a positive one - Rip's wife hates his laziness, and he hates her nagging.