show that Rip Van Winkle somehow suffers mightily because he is lazy and lives a life in extreme juxtaposition to the ideals of Franklin, he is doing so with much irony. Rip Van Winkle suffers only when he is not left alone to laze about, and never because he does not have the material or psychological benefits of the kind of hard work and thrifty life style suggested by Franklin.
In fact Rip experiences the deep, years-long sleep he does because he went into the woods to get away from those who would prevent him from his life of laziness, if not leisure:
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative to escape from the labour of the farm and the clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf [his dog], with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer in persecution.
. . . In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains (773).
Here Irving introduces the unconscious, as if he is giving a signal that what Rip is going through is not necessarily limited to the American sense of reality. Instead, the suggestion is that Rip is entering into a realm where political, geographical, economic, social and other mundane realms are left far, far behind.
If Irving were indeed saying that Rip Van Winkle somehow suffers because he does not apply himself to his work and savings in order to achieve the rewards offered by the American Dream, it would seem that Irving would have portrayed Rip in a far less favorable light. As it is in the story, however, Rip is a quite likable character, v
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