Structure: Rip Van Winkle
When you are reading, you probably spend most of your mental energy focused on the plot or the series of events in a story. When you are reading for pleasure, it is the plot that makes reading enjoyable.
You will need to consider other strategies when you are reading for a class. Rip Van Winkle is an interesting story not only because Irving’s plot line is amusing, but also because he has structured his plot in a way that mirrors his protagonist.
Consider the protagonist, Rip Van Winkle. Is he ever in a hurry. Do you get the sense that he rushes around industriously getting things done around his little village? Of course not.
Rip Van Winkle is far from industrious. He never seems in a hurry and in fact is able to spend hours fishing, never worried about getting one on his hook. Rip Van Winkle gives new meaning to the expression, “laid back.” He is a happy-go-lucky type with few worries other than his shrewish wife.
Keeping that in mind, let’s look at the structure of the story.
Washington Irving does not tell this story in a hurry. Go back and note the paragraphs in the story which serve no purpose other than to describe a scene or the characters. You may wish to place a bracket around them.
Are you surprised? The sixteenth paragraph is the first paragraph in the story which contains any action by the protagonist at all! Washington Irving’s entire story moves as slowly as Rip Van Winkle’s daily activities. The structure of the story is very similar to Rip Van Winkle himself. Washington Irving meanders through descriptions and carefully sets the stage before any action occurs at all.
This literary technique serves to focus the reader’s attention on the setting and the characters. Irving himself said that he considered “a story merely a frame on which to stretch the materials”; and he aimed at “the play of thought and sentiment and language” and “the familiar exhibition of scenes in common life.” (http://www.bartleby.com/195/1004.html)
You may find that this technique has the effect of making you drowsy as you read the story. Resist the urge to nap! You might wake up twenty years from now!