Washington Irving

The "first American man of letters," Washington

Irving was a novelist who was born on April 3rd , 1783, in New York and died on November 28th, 1859, in Tarrytown, New York. The youngest of 11 children of Scottish-English immigrant parents William Sr. and Sarah, he was named after George Washington, the hero of the just-completed American Revolution.

Irving began writing essays under the pen name Jonathan Oldstyle for the Morning Chronicle, which was edited by his older brother Peter.

In 1815, Irving traveled to England to help his brothers with the floundering family business. When that endeavor failed, he composed a collection of stories and essays that became The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Published over the course of 1819-20, The Sketch Book contained two of the author's most famous works, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and made him a literary star both in England and the United States.

After another stint abroad as U.S. minister to Spain (1842-46), Irving spent his later years at his New York estate of "Sunnyside," which served as a meeting place for the leading writers, artists and politicians of his era.

Considered perhaps the first true American writer, Irving sought to nurture his successors and pushed for stronger laws to protect writers from copyright infringement.

Summary

The Voyage is a very enthralling story narrated in first person by the character Geoffrey Crayon, an American man who takes a trip by ship to Europe.

During that adventurous travel, Crayon meditates on the gigantic differences between traveling by land and by sea; for him, taking a voyage is like closing one chapter when leaving his homeland and opening a new one when arriving at his destination, which in that case is his forefathers’ homeland.

While on the sea voyage, Crayon contemplates and meditates about the similarities of life with a ship in the ocean when it is loosened from the secure anchorage and exposed to uncertainty and a tempest. Moreover, the time in the sea serves him as an opportunity to daydream and to expand his imagination about wild creatures and phantasms of the depth.

It so happened that on a threatening evening when a storm was about to break, the crew engaged in story tales about shipwrecks and disasters. Each of them told their story, but the one that resonated the most for Crayon was the one told by the captain, in which he was sailing in the fog of Newfoundland when they smacked another ship and there was no survivor.

As the idiom says after a storm comes calm. Being on a voyage is a clear metaphor for that because there are days when the ship sails steadily and other times when it must navigate through a storm, so we can also relate this metaphor to our daily struggles.

After sailing across the vast sea and living meaningful moments, it is time to arrive in a new world full of opportunities for some and expectant friends and family for others. Such is the case of an ill man who has been on board and whom a lady is waiting for.

For each that was on board, acquaintances, friends, and business waited for them, but for Crayon there was no friend or cheering to receive just the solitary welcoming of a strange land.

The captain’s story takes place in Newfoundland.