Sleepy Hollow

Kept alive by the hundreds of various recreations and retellings, 'Sleepy Hollow' is famous as being a classic horror story to tell around the campfire. No matter what version of the story you've heard, read, or watched, each has the terrifying headless horseman, who haunts the city of Sleepy Hollow in search of a head to replace his own. As the newer editions come out, this character gets increasingly frightening, becoming a central character to the plot and even developing a back story, as in Tim Burton's film.

How on earth could Washington Irving capture such a horrific character back in 1820? Surely that sort of feat would have taken up a good deal of the short story?

Unfortunately, it did not.

Piqued by my interest after recently watching multiple versions of the story, I decided to go ahead and read the original. I was shocked to find that the only thrilling part of the entire story was a couple paragraphs towards the end. Normally I wouldn't be upset by this, but it was tiresome after reading at least 26 pages of needless, descriptive jargon. I would say that over half the novel was written about the peaceful scenery of Sleepy Hollow, and food. I could get from the Disney version that Ichabod liked food, but it wasn't as annoyingly prominent as it was in the short story.

Also, Ichabod is usually played up as a hero in most versions, but he's an absolute bigot in the short story. Lanky, proud, and constantly hungry, Ichabod is more of a walking joke. There is one scene where Ichabod describes how he intends to woo Katrina into marriage, and then rip her away from this town and her family, to a place where they can have numerous children and she can make him lots of food.

Sadly, the story itself was rather disappointing and left me wondering how it managed to become so popular in the first place. Perhaps it was simply because the story contained a character that other people wanted to toy around with.