Headless knight

I've heard a lot of fantastic stories about the stove travelers,  most of which are about the snowy mountains, the graveyards in the dark or the dead who refuse to leave. But in all these stories, the most impressive one is the legend of headless knight, which is recorded  more detailed and vivid in the legend of sleeping Hollow, Today, it is also used as a prototype by some popular animations. I was lucky enough to read this book, which is the masterpiece of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

The legend of sleepy hollow is a famous short story of Washington Irving, which tells an adventure that isn’t very complicated. Icabald, a poor teacher, who took a ride to the dance of Katrina, the daughter of an rich family. At the dance, he overheard, or intentionally heard the story of the headless knight and was too frightened to ride back alone. On the way back of the mountain, he met the legendary knight with a black horse ridden underneath, and pursued the poor man. After a stampede, at last, he came back filled with pumpkin juice and realized that it was Katrina's prank with the boy who she was in love with. He was so ashamed so that he left the peaceful village away to begin his teaching. There is another end to the legend of headless knight, which is well known to the fanciful fans: people found his horse with a broken belly belt eating grass leisurely by the river, and Icabald disappeared. The prank became true, the headless knight did exist, and unfortunate Icabald was taken to a nightmare that only he would know.

It has to be mentioned that the author's amazing sense of humor and the superb skill of putting satire into a seemingly ordinary story. As the most famous American writer in the 19th century, Washington Irving, known as the father of American literature, cared for the people with abundant confidence to the future of the people and expected a brighter social life. In the legend of sleeping Hollow, he shows the ideal life of a quiet village and the simple, kind and humorous character of the villagers, while the happiness and self-sufficiency of the early immigrants, the avarice and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie are brighten up in this light work with fluency, nature writing without any intention, which makes people give an exclamation out.

This is not a simple fairy tale, it has meaning beyond the content itself. Icabald represents the typical lower class of the United States. They have mediocre qualifications, but always want to join the upper class. Katerina, the daughter of the rich, is a representation of the upper class. She acts proudly to her pursuers like Icabald. The headless knight with the black horse can be seen as the identity gap that couldn't be crossed through in the social environment at that time, isn’t he? This is not only a tragedy of a poor boy's failure in courtship, but also the inevitable twists and turns in social development. As a result, We have a long way to go in order to confirm that we have let that nightmare, that headless knight, no longer threaten our world.

2019-12-29

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