BLOG - Sleepy Hollow

Natalie Lopaowski
Mrs. Baione-Doda
AP Literature
12 December 2008
“Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the
old Dutch wives as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and
spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins,
and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses,
and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they
sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft,
and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed
in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations
upon comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely
turn around, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!”

I chose this passage because the author uses alliteration, repetition, symbols, and oxymoron’s to convey a folklore and superstition story. The alliteration “ghosts and goblins” and “time topsy-turvy” and “sights and sounds” create a fiction story that is not to be complex. Also this appeal to a folklore story is shown through the oxymoron “fearful pleasure.” The diction of this passage and syntax is somewhat flowing and soft even though he the author writes of witchcraft and is also somewhat poetic.