for teaching the virtues of patience and long suffering,” (Irving, 938). Perhaps Rip would have been more productive at home without his wife breathing down his neck, just as America would have been more satisfying to Britain, had it not been held beneath the English thumb.The liquor of the little men pushed Rip into a twenty-year stupor, just as the propaganda of men such as Samuel Adams forced Americans into the mental snooze that necessarily accompanies war. Just as Rip awoke to view the trickery of his short companions, the Americans awoke to realize that no government is perfect. Otherwise there would be no men arguing over politics. These busy people about the once quiet town make a statement about the new democracy. Although they had gained a greater opportunity for self-advancement, they had, perhaps, lost a bit of the happiness that they enjoyed through idleness. Rip’s confusion seems to say something about the American identity crisis at the time. He questioned if he was really himself because his son and namesake had grown to fill his lazy shoes. “Rip…Beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man,” (Irving, 945). Fortunately, Rip reveled in boredom. He was too old to work, and so he sat around to talk politics. Although he was pleased with the lack of oppression, he had no one to relate to. The Americans were similarly working to find their place in the world without Mother England watching over them. They had succeeded in accomplishing their goals, and had to ask themselves what they were supposed to do next.Several of the physical changes of the town hold political significance as well. “Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared ...
