Linguistic peculiarities of the stylistic devices in the story

             After reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, I was impressed because of the skillful usage of irony and satire by the author. Irving used tragic irony to boost the comic effect. Usually, humor is used to demonstrate a person or a particular event in the comic light, and throughout the story, the reader can spectate all the struggles of Ichabod Crane.

            Ichabod is depicted ironically from various sides. To begin with, I would like to mention his appearance. He is described as  “…tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.  His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew...”

            Irving made fun of Ichabod’s way of living, ridiculed his passion for scary stories, his “animal appetite”, even his school, where our hero felt as a king: …”Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks…”

             In addition, I would like to share one quotation what made me laugh as a crazy person, I even posted it on my vkontakte page, because I could not stop laughing. And it is dedicated to…women. I am not sexist, or something, but it was just too touching:  “All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman.”.

            So, definitely, stylistic devices were used in proper way, and, frankly speaking, they boost the reader’s interest to follow the story. Unfortunately, I was not able to demonstrate all the examples of irony, used in the story, I just wanted to draw the attention to the most interesting and vivid ones.