Geoffrey Wolff

Washington Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle was a man looking to escape his troubles. When he escaped he slept for twenty years. During his sleep wars were won and lost, a new country was formed and people moved on from their memory of him. Rip Van Winkle’s town, townspeople, and house changed physically and politically while he stayed in the past during his sleep. His sleep demonstrates Irving’s idea of escapism. Irving writes how Rip Van Winkle wanted to escape due to his troubles. Before…

Figurative language can be used to paint a theme for a specific piece of literature. When the figurative language is utilized it can establish a tone and mood for the reader. In doing so, it also allows for the piece of literature to be defined into different forms like romantic and Gothic literature. “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving have different examples of figurative language that allows for them to be classified as romantic and gothic.…

The year was 1997. Rip Van Winkle is lying in bed and dreading going to work. Rip was pay phone technician with Bellsouth. He was rather lazy so this job suited him perfectly. All he had to do was drive around and repair pay phones and collect the money. Rip had been married for fifteen years. During these fifteen years, he had been bossed around daily by his wife. Today wasn’t any different. His wife, Dame Van Winkle, stormed into the bedroom and demanded that he get up. Rip replied to her in…

Washington Irving was one of the best fiction writers of the early nineteenth century. He was the first American fiction writer to obtain an international reputation. He was also named for George Washington, the first president. Irving wrote “The Devil and Tom Walker” in the early nineteenth century, and the story took place in 1727. The story’s point of view was in the third person. The story’s setting took place at Charles Bay, near Boston Massachusetts. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” it is…

“Rip Van Winkle”, written by Washington Irving, is about a man in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up twenty years later, having missed the American Revolution. The setting of “Rip Van Winkle” is in New York before and after the American Revolution. Irving uses historical allegory to create an American Romantic folktale that strengthens the national identity of the newly formed country. The main character and protagonist of the story is…

Deception, Geoffrey Wolff took on the task of justifying the lies that created a barrier between family, friends, and the general public. His memories from his childhood are disturbing, jaw-dropping, and tangled with guilt. The memoir begins with Geoffrey Wolff learning of his father’s death in 1970. With this knowledge, Wolff revealed the enigma that was his father to himself, and the readers. The book overall is part of a memoir, autobiography, and even part biography for Arthur Samuel (Duke)…

Through This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff explores the... Whilst growing up without a father can have a detrimental effect on a teenage boy, more importantly knowing that one’s father is alive, and yet indifferent to his son, can be devastating. As Jack’s biological father, Arthur Wolff is almost completely absent from his life. Growing up without a father created a huge sense of insecurity within Jack, who spends much of his teenage years imagining random strangers as his father: “Sometimes…

in themselves. The traditional American family is viewed as having a mom, a dad, and children. In the 1950s, these views were very important to everyone. If you didn’t fit into this tradition, then you weren’t a part of the realm of normal. Tobias Wolff and his mother, Rosemary, were no different from everyone else. Throughout the book, they searched in the wrong people and traveled across the states to try to become the traditional American family. That is until they became one of many who…

Alice Walker this book does not have any chapters called chapters. instead of chapters it has very big chapters with kind of like their own titles. An example of that is like this chapter title “Citizenship in the home”(219). I believe that Tobias Wolff writes the story like this because every big chapter focuses on what the title of the chapter is saying. Like in the chapter “Citizenship in the home” the story tells the reader about Toby the main character trying to find his own place in his…

This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff Set in the post-World-War Two era, in the mid 1950s, the central character Toby and his mother leave Sarasota, Florida for Utah with the eager and ambitious plans to become economically prosperous, on uranium. Toby changes his Christian name to Jack, after Jack London as he feels it will charge him with “strength and competence,” and these acts are done also out of spite and betrayal to his father, as they were abandoned. He feels unworthy of his life and feels too…