Science versus the supernatural “The Lifted Veil,” like many Gothic tales, interrogates the boundaries between scientific knowledge and the supernatural, between the rational and the irrational. This set of dichotomies is laid out in the differences between Latimer and his friend Meunier. Latimer describes their childhood friendship as an attraction of opposites, a meeting of…
Tag: Short Stories
The Lifted Veil – Characters
Alfred Latimer’s older brother Alfred is his opposite. Latimer describes him as ”a handsome, self-confident man of 6 and 20 a thorough contrast to my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self.” Alfred is their father’s favorite, as he embodies all that the father desires in a son. When Latimer is introduced to Bertha as a probable future…
The Lifted Veil – Summary
Latimer is the first-person narrator of ”The Lifted Veil,” as well as the main character. The story begins, as he informs the reader, exactly one month before his death. “Before that time comes,” he explains, ”I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience.” The…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Analysis
Irving’s narrator opens “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” with a brief description of Sleepy Hollow itself, “one of the quietest places in the whole world,” a place of “uniform tranquillity.” Before moving on to introduce his characters he concludes, ”If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Setting – Historical Context
The Dutch in New York In its earliest days as an outpost for Europeans, New York was settled by the Dutch, or people from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Henry Hudson, referred to in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as “Master Hendrick Hudson,” sailed in 1609 from present-day New York City to Albany up what…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Literary Devices – Narrator – Imagery
Narration/Narrative/Narrator There is an almost dizzying number of levels of narration and narrators in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”: a) Washington Irving is the author of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. ; b) Geoffrey Crayon is the fictional author of the volume, the one responsible for collection or creating the stories and sketches;…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Themes
City versus Country One of the great themes of American literature and American folklore is the clash between the city and the country, between civilization and the wilderness. As the theme is played out in literature around the world, it carries one of two interpretations: either the city is seen as beautiful, civilized, rich, clean…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Characters
Brom Bones See Abraham Van Brunt Ichabod Crane Ichabod Crane, the protagonist, is a stern schoolteacher and singing instructor who has come to Sleepy Hollow, New York, from Connecticut. He is lanky and sharp-featured, awkward and somewhat clumsy, but more educated and sophisticated than the native villagers. He is quite fond of food, and is…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Summary
The story opens with a long descriptive passage offered in the first person by the narrator, who is revealed at the end of the story to be a man in a tavern who told the story to “D. K.” Irving’s contemporaries, and readers of the entire Sketch Book, know that “D. K.” is Diedrich Knickerbocker,…
In Another Country – Analysis – Essay
One of the most often-discussed aspects of Ernest Hemingway’s writing is his distinctive style. Whereas many writers of his day were still heavily influenced by the verbose, extremely descriptive style of English and American authors of the nineteenth century such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Herman Melville, Hemingway was not. His literature is free…