Supernatural Ambiguity: What It Is and How to Deal With It

Part one 

Anderson portrays Ichabod to be the cause of his undoing is through his mysterious actions. He says Ichabod’s thoughts revolved around infatuations that obstructed him from reality (Jamil, 2019). He would read Cotton Mather’s books on Salem witch trials for long then follow through dark woods that were believed to have strange sounds that interfered with someone’s senses (Jacobs, 2015). Sleepy Hollow is said to have characteristics of a superstitious atmosphere that captivated both natives and strangers. The speaker chooses direct terms to describe the real situation of the surroundings to remove any ideas of uncertainties and ambiguities from the audience’s perception of Sleepy Hollow’s haunted nature.

After reading the various local ghost stories, Ichabod’s mind gets compromised, and Anderson opposes the narrative of having an encounter with the headless horseman to be an overreaching imagination to scare him from the love triangle they had with Katrina Van Tassel. Therefore, the supernatural ambiguity whose possibility is associated with the headless horseman can be disputed because of the mysterious nature of Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod’s state of mind.

Part two 

Life presents each individual with opportunities to make significant decisions. Besides, every choice that a person makes eventually comes with its outcomes that may either have positive or negative implications to the doer. In the narrative, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright, describes a man who wants to be a man, but whose actions and decisions without a doubt indicate his unpreparedness to undertake the consequences involved. Through making selfish choices and the burning desire to gain family respect, the author uses the main protagonist, Dave, who is seventeen years of age, and the poor decisions that depict him as a just ‘almost a man.’ It is clear to state that the circumstances of Dave’s decision to purchase a gun and hide it from his mother are all because of an imaginative allure.

References

Gale, C. L. (2015).  A Study Guide for Legend of Sleepy Hollow's Legend of Sleepy Hollow . Gale Cengage Learning. 

Jacobs, E. R. (2015). The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: An Ambiguous Ghost Tale.  Aidenn: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal of American Literature ,  1 (1), 2. 

Jamil, S. S. (2019). Storytellers in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews , 1-9.