Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle is a story about a old man who one day goes hiking to a beautiful place, meets some "elves" , drinks liquor they provide to him, and falls asleep for twenty years. It was a pretty boring story, but a intriguing situation to think about, even though we all know it is impossible. I put myself in his position and thought what if I fell asleep for even ten years. How would my child look? He would all of a sudden be talking to me. Who would be president and would we still be fighting in war. What if the people ruled all of a sudden and the world was going crazy. What if our technology reached the unbelievable, and our cars your built to fly, and we had robots doing everything for us.

It's crazy enough thinking there probably will be a major growth within ten year. But to be asleep through the whole transition would throw you off as a human being completely. The way we talk changes on a daily basis, think about not communicating for ten years. You might be socially retarded.

In the story they demonstrate many examples of romanticism. One of the examples I found was "His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched." What he means is something crazy happened to him, and he thinks everything around him is evil, and betraying him. You need your imagination to say this because it is not logic. He feels scared so he says everything is "bewitched", but he really knows the town cannot be evil. "He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings." What the mean by this saying is that there has always been a folk tale of creatures haunting the mountains. This is a example of romanticism because no one has seen these creatures, people just feel that they are there but their really not.

In the poem Thanatopsis I feel he is talking about a woman he loves, how the times when their together are so great, but when its almost time for her to go how he falls apart. I also think he is talking about how people die and go to a greater place which he refers to as heaven. What comes off to me as romantic in this poem is that he is imagining how heaven is and the people there, but he doesn't really know. It is strictly his imagination he is writing about.

In the Rope walk ,by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I think the point of this writing is to take you to a place he sees, or feels. When he says, "With it mounts her own fair face, As at some magician's spell." That sticks out to me because she must have a very catchy facial expression for him to notice and describe her face as he did. This is also a example of romanticism because there is no such thing as magic, and you also have to imagine what her face looks like.

You could use a visual piece of art to illustrate romanticism. The reason I believe this is that when you look at the picture you imagine what goes on there, you wonder where it is, and sometimes you may even feel like your there. Some pictures can take you on a journey just by looking at them.