Truth, History and Storytelling Theme Analysis

“Rip Van Winkle” is a framed story, in which a fictional storyteller (historian Diedrich Knickerbocker) is said to have collected it and in so doing establishes the story’s status as a credible historical account. But we have reason to doubt its status as such. Knickerbocker does not research using historical texts. He instead collects his stories straight from the mouths of Dutch families. His historical “research” consists of oral storytelling. What’s more, the story includes obviously mythological and magical figures, the “strange beings” that “haunt” the Catskill Mountains (later revealed to be the spirit of mutinied ship Captain Hendrick Hudson and his remaining loyal crew). The story opens with a poem about truth; but in the first paragraph Knickerbocker notes the “magical” beauty of the Catskills. There is the immediate suggestion that “Truth” is not the same as “historical fact.”

We know that Knickerbocker has spoken with Rip Van Winkle, whose own story is (we’re told) beyond doubt, but we are also frequently being clued in on details that make the account seem less reliable. For instance, Rip cannot keep his story straight the first few times he tells it, but we are led to believe his eventual consistency is reason enough to believe him. We are repeatedly prompted (paradoxically by Knickerbocker’s constant reassurance) to wonder what is real and what isn’t—and what “truth” itself consists in. Where does the line between history and fiction occur, and can “truth” still be present where facts are in dispute?

Washington Irving was himself a historical writer and biographer as well as a fiction writer in the tradition of American Romanticism. So, his interest in the relationship between truth and fiction, history and the mystical or irrational, is unsurprising. At the time of “Rip Van Winkle’s” publication, America was growing and beginning to construct its national identity. Perhaps the conflation of “history” and “fiction” demonstrated by Diedrich Knickerbocker is meant to suggest that storytelling, art, and culture develop a country’s history and identity as much as so-called “factual” events do. Irving’s interest is not only in compiling America’s historical record, but also in developing (and calling for the further development of) an American mythology, American folk history, and a new and distinct American voice.