Because this is a revised essay, you should make sure that it is longer than the original draft was. For example, the literary analysis essay was 2-3 typed pages and the Freedom Writers essay was 3-4 handwritten pages. You would have to double these pages by adding more detail, more explanation, and more sources. (Final Draft should be around 6-7 typed pages).
See sample below:
Ogbara, Moremi
Professor Quintero
Spring 2008
Witchcraft
and Ritual in the “Lucius, or the Ass” and Washington Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow”
Religious themes have graced the pages
of satirical works throughout the many ages of literature. From the Biblical satire of antiquity to the
classical works of Juvenal and Horace, the medieval invectives of Chaucer and
the renaissance diatribes of Rabelais to the later lampoons of Fielding and Ben
Johnson, satire has always criticized religion in some form or manner. However,
the subject of witchcraft in satire differs somewhat from the norm in that it
often exists to reproof characters for vice such as curiosity and greed.
“Lucius, the Ass” typically ascribed to Lucian, presents a tale about a man
whose curiosity in witchcraft leads him astray. Similarly, Washington Irving’s
“Sleepy Hollow” functions as a diatribe of a man whose infatuation with witchcraft
leads to his downfall and exclusion from society. These works employ satire to
comment on the precarious nature of socially imposed constructs, and utilize
the motif of witchcraft to tell cautionary tales warning readers of the dangers
of overstepping these traditional boundaries.
Some critics would argue that “Sleepy
Hollow does not qualify as satire because of the lack of “self-presentation of
its author figure” (Keane 32). In
addition, Quintero notes that “satirists do not wither in despair but, on the
contrary, feel compelled to express their dissent” (Quintero 1). In so speaking, “Sleepy Hollow” would not
function as a satire because Ichabod Crane does not tell his own tale, and at
the end of the story, he is abandoned by the community and by the narrator. However, this essay strives to demonstrate
that while the story’s subject does “wither in despair,” the work still
functions as satire because of the manner of narration and the frame tale.
Washington Irving’s background as a
satirist is most highly noted in his work, A
History of New York, a parody, of Samuel Latham Mitchell’s The Picture of New-York, which
criticizes historian pedantry and President Jefferson and creates a character
named, Mr. Knickerbocker. “Sleepy
Hollow’s narrator describes the work as being in Knickerbocker’s possession,
and this fact deems it in part satirical as belonging to the greater work of
Irving’s previous satire. However, in
order to determine the work as satire, we must first determine who tells the
story by analyzing the ending paragraphs which produce the frame tale. Although the story is found among the papers
of Mr. Knickerbocker, we are quickly made aware that Knickerbocker functions
only as a scribe in that he writes, “almost in the precise words,” the story
told at a “corporation meeting” in what is now Manhattan (1012). Knickerbocker
describes the true narrator as a “pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow”
with a “sadly humorous face” which would seem the visage of a common satirist
in that he criticizes with humor.
Some would raise the question of
reliability because Knickerbocker describes his notation of the story as
“almost precise,” an admission that he must have added or omitted certain
events of the story before presenting it to his audience. In addition, the story-teller’s last response,
“I don’t believe on half of it myself” points to him as having had second-hand
knowledge of the story (1013). Therefore,
the story is mediated by both the storyteller and Knickerbocker as scribe and
editor, thus restricting the reader’s access to the truth of the tale. However, I would argue that the obvious
recognition between the story-teller and the “tall, dry-looking gentleman, with
beetling eyebrows” reveals their identities as the elderly Brom Bones and Ichabod
Crane (1012). The “triumphant leer” the
story-teller gives the other man, indicates his defeat over his competitor and
declares him the ultimate hero of the story.
By rereading the text with this notion in mind, Brom Bones becomes the “first-person
speaker” telling the story of his heroic deeds and in turn mocking “aspects of
contemporary morality and social life” via his description of Crane’s downfall (Keane
32).
Bruner’s study of “Sleepy Hollow” sets out to describe it
as a “rollicking parody of ancient Greek myths and rites of Greek fertility
cults, a comic story of death and rebirth, fertility and immortality”
(274). She justifies her statement by
noting Brom Bones’s “Herculean” description and suggests that as the hero, Brom enters the underworld by posing as
the headless horseman in order to compete with Ichabod and win the hand of
Katrina Van Tassel. In the end, he gets
his lady and returns home as a “respected landholder” (274). In much the same way, “Lucius, or the Ass”
also proves a parody of Greek myths in that it mocks mythical rituals and
presents witchcraft as something comical and negative. As for the notion of
‘death and rebirth,’ this Greek story mirrors such in Lucius’s movements from
man to donkey in which he is cast into the literary underworld to struggle
through a virtual death of inhumane slavery and find his way back to his
rightful place in society: a man in the upper class.
Walsh
describes the story as lacking “philosophical or theological overtones (Walsh
75). He continues to depict it as being
“no more than light-hearted entertainment” in which the curiosity is
“stigmatized as a social lapse” (75).
However, this theory would prove faulty because the story employs
satirist that is “more than a partisan advocate or a clownish entertainer” in
that he takes responsibility for his “own subjective indulgence or personal
indignation” (Quintero 2). Lucius does
so in the end of his narrative by offering “fervent prayers of thanksgiving” for
his salvation “not from a dog’s ass, but from a donkey’s, where my curiosity
had taken me” (94). Clearly, this ending
is replete with philosophical and theological overtones as Lucian realigns
himself with divinity and acknowledges his own errors. Additonally, the work is
clearly satirical in that it denigrates abuse of slaves and animals as well as
the practice of religious ritual such as witchcraft and mythology.
It
seems that witchcraft embodies the notion of curiosity, a temptation to
discover that which is forbidden, and this connects to the function of
overstepping societal boundaries to trespass in restricted zones. Elliot describes
the satirist as being “concerned with punishing vice” (Elliot 11) as well as
“one primordial demand – a demand that out of the fears and confusions engendered
by a hostile world man shall be able to impose some kind of order” (Elliot 58). “Sleepy
Hollow” and “Lucius, the Ass” deal with the politics of traditional social
roles of gender and social class, and these satirists utilize the genre to
restore social order set askew by the witchcraft represented in the works.
In
“Lucius, the Ass,” the traditional role designed for Lucius is that of an upper
classed male in ancient Greek society.
It appears he is a member of the upper class because he arrives in Thessaly
on a mission to settle his father’s estate.
Immediately, we acknowledge the economic nature of his quest and note
that matters of finances will be of some importance in this work. Furthermore, the fact that Lucius arrives
with his horse and servant in tow, reveals his upper class position. In “Sleepy Hollow,” the roles are more subtly
designed. There is a vague distinction
between “pioneers of the mind” and pioneers of the forest, and it seems that
the townsfolk root for the latter (994).
In addition, Ichabod Crane arrives as an outsider in that he hails from
Connecticut and the narrator’s repeated inferences of such mark Crane’s
otherness. Crane gazes with his “great
green eyes” at Katrina Van Tassel, who he describes as “so tempting a morsel” and
he looks upon her father’s land with his “devouring mind’s eye” (998). This language reveals Crane’s focus on profit
and consumption and his desire to cross social class boundaries from teacher
dependent on the community to a landowning citizen (999).
While
Lucius does not cross social boundaries willfully, his involvement in
witchcraft allows for a reversal of gender roles and this serves as the
harbinger of his temporary destruction. Lucius states his initial desire to
meet women “who were experts in witchcraft” (60) and later in his desire to
watch Hipparchus’s wife “practicing her magic and changing her shape” (65). Note that his discovery of the witch in
Hipparchus’s home derails him from his initial mission to settle his father’s
accounts. Furthermore, Lucius’s
never-ending desire to satiate his thirst for otherworldly knowledge leads to
his downfall as he uses the witch’s magic of metamorphosis and transfiguration.
In
this case, Lucius seems an anomaly because he receives his power of transfiguration
not from the society, but from a strange woman in a foreign land. His power of transfiguration is illegitimate
because it does not manifest in the traditional manner, and furthermore the
fact that it comes from a woman confounds the situation because this also
throws of the natural order which places man in control over women. Hipparchus’s wife is described as a witch who
uses her magic and sexuality to “get even” with men (61). Her act of turning
them into animals, parallels castration or emasculation, for Lucius finds that
he cannot take part in intercourse until he joins the company of men. In order to repair the state of imbalance,
Lucius as a donkey, must find a way to retrieve his humanity by realigning
himself with the natural order. For this
reason, his compliance in the act of intercourse with a female reasserts his
masculinity and social status as the woman is of the aristocratic class.
Likewise,
Crane’s desire to be haunted by ghosts of Sleepy Hollow functions as curiosity
to obtain knowledge and interaction with the supernatural world. As satirist, Brom Bones parodies Gothic
conventions, namely witchcraft, to criticize the capitalistic and pompous
nature of the New American embodied by Ichabod Crane. In Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane always
carries Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, which is later burned along with
his New-England Almanack and a “book of dreams and fortune telling” at the
behest of Hans Van Ripper (1011). The narrator notes that Ichabod was a
“perfect master” on the book of witchcraft and he makes sure to add that
Ichabod “most firmly and potently believed” in the contents of the text (996).
In such a manner, the book has taken the place of a Bible for Crane, and
witchcraft has become his religion and focus of study. Clearly[1],
the Gothic influence in the town predates Crane’s arrival to the town, but it
is he who conjures ideas that “he was struck with a witch’s token” and still he
who jumps “at the sound of his own steps” (997). Crane seems to bring about a
haunting upon himself and the narrator suggests that this results from his affinity
for witchcraft. The narrator describes
Crane’s “wistful look” as he watches a ray of light from afar, and the way he
evokes terror with every thought (997).
Evidently, he wishes to become a part of what he reads of in his book of
witchcraft and wishes that the contents be made manifest in reality. This wish allows him to haunt himself from
within and make believe he sees a headless horseman instead of a jealous rival.
In the end, of “Sleepy Hollow,” “the powers of the ‘marvelous’ have been
replaced by the powers of the mundane” and Crane is left “as vulnerable as
before” (Anderson 210). While “Ichabod has been the victim of Brom Bones’s
practical joke” he has also played a joke “unwittingly” on himself. (Anderson
210).
Ripper’s
destruction of Crane’s books because he determines to “send his children no
more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading
and writing,” and the eventual abandonment of the schoolhouse may seem an act
of willful ignorance at the onset (1011). However, it seems as if the residents of this
town wish to hearken back to the Greek tradition of oral narrative and eschew
book learning and all of the advances it has to offer. For Irving, these
advances, seen in Crane’s hometown of Connecticut, lead to alienation due to a
lack of community and a separation of citizens. For those of Sleepy Hollow,
Crane’s books are witchcraft not merely due to their subject matter but also
because of the scientific advances/capitalism/greed and other vices that incur
upon becoming better educated such as Irving. The dangerous curiosity here
differs from Lucius’s simple desire to see a supernatural ceremony. Knowledge
itself becomes a dangerous curiosity that must be extinguished just as the
books and schoolhouse are in the end.
While
the narrator of “Sleepy Hollow” abandons Crane and “leaves its subject
refracted and disharmonized,” he and Lucius work to restore the natural order
in their respective societies (Quintero 3). Just as the narrator of “Sleepy
Hollow” tells his audience, “ there is no situation in life but has its
advantages and pleasures, provided we will but take a joke as we find it”
(1012).
_____________________________________________________________________
Works
Consulted
Primary Texts:
Irving, Washington.
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” The Norton
Anthology of American
Literature, 1820-1865, Volume B. Ed.
Nina Baym. 6th Edition. New York, 2003.
Lucian. “Lucius,
the Ass” Selected Satires of Lucian.
Ed. Lionel Casson. The Norton Library,
W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, 1968.
Secondary Sources:
Anderson, Donald.
“Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’” Explicator
(June 2003): 61.4
Bruner, Marjorie
W. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Mythological Parody.” College English
Elliot, Robert C. The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art.
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1960.
Keane, Catherine.
“Defining the Art of Blame: Classical Satire”
Perry, Ben Edwin.
“Who Was Lucius of Patrae?” The Classical Journal
Quintero, Ruben.
“Introduction: Understanding Satire”
Walsh, P.G. “Was
Lucius a Roman?” The Classical Journal
Walsh, P.G. “The
Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)” Greece & Rome
The Classical Association, 1988.
[1]
The narrator peppers the text with language
denoting witchcraft and begins by noting that there is also a notion that “the place was bewitched by a
high German doctor,”
and that Sleepy Hollow appears to
be “under the sway of some witching power” that “holds a spell over the minds of the good people” (993).
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