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Explanation and Analysis—"Authentic" Histories:
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is narrated by a fictional historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker. Knickerbocker claims that he is trying to relate a “precise and authentic” history of Ichabod Crane’s encounter with the Headless Horseman. However, he goes on to explain that the authentic historians of Sleepy Hollow spend their time collecting old wives’ tales about local ghosts.
Evidently, Knickerbocker’s version of “authentic” history involves recording and tabulating supernatural gossip, a view that calls his reliability as a narrator into question. He becomes even less trustworthy during the story’s postscript when readers learn that Knickerbocker heard this story at a “Corporation meeting of the ancient city of Manhattoes.” Knickerbocker describes the original storyteller as follows:
The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow, in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face, and one whom I strongly suspected of being poor—he made such efforts to be entertaining.
Since the original storyteller’s goal was to entertain his audience, not relate an accurate account, Knickerbocker’s authentic history is compromised.
However, Knickerbocker and the storyteller aren’t the only unreliable narrators in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The story is full of characters who stretch facts, from Brom Bones’ and his race against the Headless Horseman to the Van Tassel party guests and their heroic exploits in the American Revolution.
Related Themes:
