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Dramatic Irony
Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Brains vs. Brawn:
Ichabod Crane’s foil is Brom Bones, a good-natured prankster who is Ichabod’s primary rival in the battle for Katrina Van Tassel's affection. His athleticism and masculinity bring Ichabod’s deficiencies as a suitor into stark relief. Brom is known for his “Herculean frame and great powers of limb," whereas Ichabod looks like “some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield." While Brom Bones leads a gang of rough companions, Ichabod socializes almost exclusively with women, joining them on their country walks and gathering grapes for them.
Though Ichabod’s physical strength is no match for Brom’s, his intellectual and artistic accomplishments keep him in the running for Katrina’s hand. As a schoolmaster and music teacher who has “read several books quite through," Ichabod’s smarts appear to outshine Brom’s at first glance. However, the narrator strongly insinuates that the headless apparition that frightens Ichabod out of town is actually Brom Bones. If this is the case, Brom uses both brawn and brains—superior horsemanship skills and cunning tactics—to successfully manipulate the gullible Ichabod, whose intellectual superiority may not be as certain as readers were initially led to believe.
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is not a simple tale about how strength is superior to smarts. By its end, the divide between physical ability and intellectual ability reveals itself to be a false dichotomy. Both suitors are intelligent in different ways and both are winners at the story’s close: Brom Bones wins Katrina by virtue of his sportsmanship and mental prowess, while Ichabod escapes from the witching influence of Sleepy Hollow and wins a successful judicial career.
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