Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is an archetypal children's ghost story. Irving's text paints a rich, explanatory tale. It is an entertaining story with deep descriptions if a narrow plot. The story may hold some metaphoric implications or be entirely fanciful.
             The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about a peaceful New England town and the legend of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. After pursuing her, Ichabod is rejected by the daughter of one of Tarry Towns well-to-do farmers. Distraught he runs from the town into the night. Crane finds himself in the forest where he finds himself confronted by the Headless Horseman. A chase ensues; Ichabod is gone. No one in the town knows what happened to them, many speculate. Some believe that he simply kept running, others say that he was killed by the horseman, the "old country wives" "maintain" that he was "spirited away".
             Before the story is a poem by Knickerbocker:
             A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
             Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
             And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
             Forever flushing round a summer sky.
             Such describes the state of the town and the premise of the story. Greensburgh or Tarry Town is a quaint, village; it is a pleasant, dull town. The poem speaks of a "pleasing land of drowsy head" and a place "forever flushing round a summers sky." This indicates that Tarry Town lives in an unstable state of monotony; though superficially pleasant the town is stagnant. It sleeps in the shadow of an indifferent light; a "Castle of Indolence."
             After some more descriptions of the town a nearby valley of "uniform tranquility", a Sleepy Hollow, is introduced. Such accentuates the aforementioned characteristics. A defined, singular concept like that of the town is easy to compensate, hence the legend of
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