Moral of Washington Irvings The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Essay

Moral of Washington Irvings The Legend of sleepy inaneIn Washington Irvings short story The Legend of asleep(predicate) Hollow, the conflict between depth and Ro homophiletic melodic themels is narrativized. Irvings story is an geographic expedition of the conflict between these two schools of thought. Irving uses his displace, his characters, and his moral (or lack thereof) to critique the prudence. At first reading, Sleepy Hollow may seem no more(prenominal) than a dreamy folk tale. But when read in the background of the emerging resistance to Enlightenment thinking, it reveals itself to be a striking vow of the ideals of the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by the reign of reason. Enlightenment thinkers believed in the supremacy of reason above all other human faculties, and in the perfectibility of man and therefore society. Scientific understanding and the pursuit of knowledge were key pursuits in this time. Materialism was emphas ized as an overt rejection of the superstition of the Middle Ages. The ideals of the Enlightenment were moderateness, objectivism, and the enlightened society based on pragmatism. In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving uses all of the tools at his disposal as a storyteller to lucubrate his criticism of Enlightenment ideals. First of all, he creates an atmosphere and a setting where reason is at a loss. Also, he uses the character of Ichabod Crane to comprise Enlightenment principles, and then has this character become a figure of ridicule. Additionally, Irving uses his windup to poke fun at the Enlightenment idea of literature as being necessarily didactic. All of these elements come together to provide a thorough indictment of the Enlightenment. ... ...e. He then has the storyteller himself question the ingenuousness of the story with his final line, I dont believe half of it myself, which scorns not just the immensity of a moral, but again questions the impor tance of truth and verifiability. While Irving may poke fun at the idea of a simplistic moral, a clear maxim that one endure easily digest, he nevertheless infuses his work with a message. If any moral could be taken from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it is that there are some(a) places where reason cannot guide us. The possibility of a place where reason and rationality are no longer useful is a direct and cutting critique of the ideals of the Enlightenment. Through his tools of the trade as a storyteller, Irving effectively denounces the limits of Enlightenment thinking, and opens the door for the possibilities of Romanticism and the Gothic.