Rip Van Winkle: A Classic Tale of Passive Resistance Essays -- Rip Va

In this classic tale Rip Van Winkle is visualised as one who is a victim of circumstances beyond his control. A further reading may perhaps reveal a disparate Rip Van Winkle, one who pursues an avenue of passive impedance in chemical reaction to a look which he feels is beyond his control. Passive resistor is usually connected with such famous people as heat content David Thoreau who developed the principal of civil disobedience. For Thoreau, the idea was to choose non to prevail governmental taxes and policies that he felt were wrong. This theme was later utilize by Mahatma Gandhi in his fight for Indian independence. In the 1960s this method was used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring racial injustice to the familiars attention. In all of these cases, the men who followed the ideal of passive resistance were prepared to suffer the consequences of their actions in order to draw attention to their causes. nonpareil can find similarities between Rip Van Winkles actio ns and the actions of those who pursue passive resistance. In Rips case, the governing trust that he was struggling with is represented by the responsibilities in his life. This is very put across when one compares his own farm to those of others at that time. He did non portion out for his farm as was expected of him. Rather, he pursued a life that one at the time would have considered slothful, discussing current events with his friends, befriending local children and animals and doing assorted favors for neighbors while his own property suffered. When confronted by his wife, his response was neither to betoken nor to change his behavior. A simple silent shrug of the shoulders was all the response he offered. In all of this, Dame Van Winkle has been visualised as the villain. H... ...urns 20 years later after his wife is dead, he does not take responsibility for his departure. Instead he concocts a stage showing how this situation was totally out of his control. Rather t han admit that he was not able to fulfill his responsibilities or that his wife was a termagant and he could no longer tolerate it, he makes up a story about being asleep in the woods. He and so returns to his previous life. Curiously, the community and even his own daughter do not appear to seriously question his explanation. Whether this is due to their collective superstition or whether they inwardly understood his need to remove himself from a difficult marriage, it is not clear. What is clear, is that Rip Van Winkle failed to support his family and then abandoned them. He chose a path of flawed passive resistance which did not take up the consequences of his actions.