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The Legend Of The Sleepy Hollow Analysis

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Gothic literature is style of literature that consistently delivers scary, gory, and captivating stories using one main literary element. This element is theme. Some notable prices of gothic literature which use lots of theme to deliver the story include, Rip Van Winkle, the devil and Tom Walker, and the Legend of the sleepy Hollow. In all of these stories, there is a universal idea to deliver messages through the use of different themes types of greed, all of themes are brought to life by using different thoughts and ideas to further better the writing, and make each story different than the other one. In addition, in some cases, Irving uses personal experiences to further enhance the theme of the stories.
The gothic story Rip Van Winkle is set in the wonder filled Catskill Mountains in which, the lazy protagonist who, surprisingly loves exploring, tries to escape his nagging wife by venturing out into the Catskill Mountains. Similar to Irving, Rip was also away for a long time from his home. This means Irving took pieces of his own life to enhance the theme in this story. A very prominent theme in this …show more content…

This is particularly true in the rampant selfishness seen in the protagonist. Most obviously, Ichabod wants to have Katrina most of all for the increase to his wealth she would represent this would make him richer, and he even imagines himself selling off her family’s farm once it would be in his possession, for the money. Similar to rip he desires only what will benefit him, this shows that Irving uses faint but similar types of themes in some if his gothic work. But, different to Wrinkle, Ichabod does the bare minimum just to make everyone else happy, just too again, benefit him, therefore, the two stories, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow share similar

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