In Washington Irving's legendary "Rip van Winkle,"
descriptions of nature are enlived by the author's use of figurative
language:
PERSONIFICATION
As
Rip van Winkle sits in the shade on long lazy summer days, he and the other men talk
listlessly as the "placid clouds" pass
overhead.
When van Winkle decides to pursue his favorite
sport of squirrel shooting, he and his dog Wolf venture up the
"fairy mountains"; however van Winkle becomes exhausted and
lies down on a knoll that "crowned the brow" of a
precipice. Rip can see at a distance the "lordly Hudson,"
moving with its
majestic course,
with the reflection of a purple coud, or the sail of a
lagging bark here and there
sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in
the blue highlands.
This
personification elevates nature to a superior importance, one much in keeping with
Irving's Romantic style. For, the romanticizing of the Kaatskill Mountains and the
"fairy" atmosphere of the little men playing at ninepins in their jekins with long
knives alludes to Henry Hudson and his crew members underscores Irving's motif of the
beauty and joy to be found in nature, which is also home to memory. Clearly,
Irving's nostalgia for the more romantic world of the prerevolutionary times is
communicated to readers with the author's figurative language and light-hearted humor.
For, once van Winkle awakens, he is "sorely perplexed" as he is confronted with the
harsh realities of new flags and poles and the "bustling disputatious" tone of the new
inn.
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