Title: Rip Van Winkle Character Analysis in Rip Van Winkle | LitCharts
Headings: Rip Van Winkle
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Rip Van Winkle Character Analysis
Rip Van Winkle Quotes in Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle Character Timeline in Rip Van Winkle

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Rip Van Winkle Character Analysis
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Dame Van Winkle
The protagonist of the story, Rip Van Winkle is a genial, passive man living in a small Dutch province in the Catskills, who spends his time engaging in work that is not useful or profitable, such as hunting squirrels and doing odd jobs in houses and gardens that aren’t his own. He is the “henpecked husband” of his constantly nagging wife, Dame Van Winkle, from whom he is often hiding, and who is the cause of most of Rip’s unhappiness. Rip ventures up to the top of a mountain one day while squirrel hunting and encounters strange beings who bewitch him with liquor such that he sleeps for 20 years, missing the American Revolution and the dramatic transformation of both his town and the country around it. Rip Van Winkle Quotes in Rip Van Winkle
The Rip Van Winkle quotes below are all either spoken by Rip Van Winkle or refer to Rip Van Winkle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Penguin Classics edition of Rip Van Winkle published in 1999. “Rip Van Winkle” Quotes
The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar’s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble…in a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own;