Ichabod Crane

Ichabod Crane is a fictional character and the protagonist in Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, first published in 1820. The name Ichabod comes from the biblical name of the grandson of Eli the High Priest and son of Phinehas. Irving may have borrowed the name from that of Ichabod B. Crane, a colonel in the US Army during the War of 1812 whom he had met in 1814 in Sackets Harbor, New York. According to a notation by Irving, the character of Ichabod Crane was based on a schoolteacher named Jesse Merwin, whom Irving befriended in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809. According to an 1894 article in The New York Times, “it [was] claimed by many that Samuel Youngs was the original from whom Irving drew his character of Ichabod Crane.” As described in the story, Ichabod Crane follows strict morals in the schoolroom, including the proverbial “Spare the rod and spoil the child”; outside the schoolroom, he is shown to have few morals and no motive but his own gratification. Despite being thin, he is capable of eating astonishingly large amounts of food and is constantly seeking to do so. In addition to this, he is excessively superstitious, often to the extent of believing every myth, legend, and tall tale to be literally true. As a result, he is perpetually frightened by anything that reminds him of ghosts or demons. A turning point in the story occurs when Ichabod becomes enamored of one Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a wealthy farmer named Baltus Van Tassel, who pays little attention to his daughter other than to be proud of her merits when they are praised. On account of both her beauty and her father’s wealth, Ichabod begins to court Katrina, who seems to respond in kind. This attracts the attention of the town rowdy, Abraham “Brom Bones” van Brunt, who also wants to marry Katrina. Despite Brom’s efforts to humiliate or punish the schoolmaster, Ichabod remains steadfast, and neither contestant seems able to gain any advantage throughout this rivalry. Later, both men are invited to a harvest festival party at Van Tassel’s where Ichabod’s social skills far outshine Brom’s. After the party breaks up, Ichabod remains behind for “a tête-à-tête with the heiress,” where it is supposed that he makes a proposal of marriage to Katrina, but, according to the narrator, “Something, however … must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen,” meaning that his proposal is refused, allegedly because her sole purpose in courting him was either to test or to increase Brom’s desire for her. Therefore Ichabod leaves the house “with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady’s heart.” During his journey home, Ichabod encounters another traveler, who is eventually revealed to be the legendary Headless Horseman; the ghost of a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod flees with the Horseman chasing after him, eventually crossing a bridge near the Dutch burial ground. Because the ghost is incapable of crossing this bridge, Ichabod assumes that he is safe. However, the Horseman throws his own severed head at Ichabod, knocking him from the back of his own horse and sending him “tumbling headlong into the dust.” The next morning, Ichabod’s hat is found abandoned, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. Ichabod is never seen in Sleepy Hollow again, and is therefore presumed to have been spirited away by the Headless Horseman. Although not stated directly, it can be assumed that Brom was the Horseman, whose legend he took advantage of so as to dispose of his rival.