2. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow《睡谷的传说》

2. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Name: Zhu Mi

Class: English 112

Is It A Legend Or Reality?

The novel told a story of "sleepy hollow" of what happened. This place was not far from New York City, in the Hudson River, with many terrific legends, among them the Headless Knight was the most sensational. It was said that a battle during the Revolutionary War, a cavalry Hector plug head dozen fly by shell first. After the death, his soul often rode off dash away in the night, to return to the battlefield for his own head. The main character in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow named Baade Klein, migrating to the primary school as a teacher, who admired Katrina and coveted her beauty, the daughter of rich local Dutch families.

However, there was lots of rival in his love for Katrina, one of the biggest enemies was bloom van Brent, a man in the local bossiness. One night, Baade Klein rode to van's family dinner; back on the way encountered the headless knight, who chased after him several times. And the headless knight would kick to the head of Baade. The next day, the locals only found Klein’s hat and a broken pumpkin, with the idea that he was taken away by supernatural power. A few years later, someone saw Klein was a judge in New York, and bloomed in crane soon after missing. He married Catherine. Whenever someone mentioned Klein and pumpkin's story, he would laugh, seemed to have some secrets he did not intend to tell people.

Klein was a true selfish, arrogant man who was alienated in the sleepy hollow where people were all kind and innocent, totally different from him. Though Klein was not a well-recognized man by people, he won success in the New York and married a woman, which was ironic and sarcasm. From this we saw the real world and what reality was like at that time in America.

The Dutch farmer's daughter Katrina was the representatives of women in the sleepy hollow, whose image had a positive meaning. She loved coquetted and pretended to fall in love with Baade Klein. As a matter of fact, she was playing with Baade Klein and controlled him, just for the sake of his rival calming dow n firmly, as the narrator say “which is a trick” She was not a innocent girl, but calculating woman in love.

However, the description of sleepy hollow was truly like a legend, for all the sceneries were too beautiful and peaceful to believe by people living in the reality. Irving used the romanticism of the brush depicted the sleepy hollow as a utopian place, the characters and events included. A quiet and mysterious hollow reflected the writer was highlighting his yearning for an ideal society in the novel reveled in a lot of environment, to create environmental background of the story. The other was to create a story atmosphere.

The short novel left much space for readers to think and to guess what had happened and what was the story was talking about. It was different from what I have read before, it was short but completed. It was a little bit horrible but filled with beautiful scenes. It mirrored reality in an indirect and fancy way.