"Drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. The people are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her nine fold, seems to make it a favorite scene for her gambols- (633). .
Irving begins his haunted tale with this imaginative description of the land. This enchanted region that Irving conjures up seems the perfect and ideal place for a legend of a headless horseman. The people of the land are consumed by the haunted tales, ghost stories and old superstitions. The townspeople are sheltered from the "real world- and are engulfed into this fable, almost fairytale land. Irving's satire is playing on the naveté of the townspeople, the gullibility and stupidity of Ichabod Crane and the creativity of Brom Bones. .
Ichabod is a typical bookish character who is at the heart of Irving's ridicule throughout the story. Typically, in eighteenth century America, male school teachers were looked down upon and criticized because this role was usually played by women. He is strict in his discipline of the children and punishes them without a second thought. Ichabod is personified as the comic protagonist. He is extremely addicted to the imaginative. Irving often leads the reader astray with Ichabod's wild fantasies and silly thoughts and plans. The fact that his favorite book, in which he firmly believes is Cotton Mather's history of New England witchcraft his hysterically ironic. .
"He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous and his powers for digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spellbound region.
