This feature of identity is directly linked to the structure of the literary genre of short story, defined through its "unity of effect-, containing momentary, revelatory or epiphanic experiences, leading to a conclusion, meaning that a tension will be finally solved, a crisis will inevitably lead to happiness or grief, or characters will lose or win
That is why the shape of short story is so well fitted to express this experience of the quest for identity. .
American writers, such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers and others have all experienced the approach of this theme in their short stories. The way they have envisaged their works centered on the theme of the quest for a specific identity is part of their process of defining their own identities as writers in the field of the American literature.
The central figure in American literary world between 1809 (the year of his parody History of New York) and the Civil War, generally considered the "Father of American short story-, Washington Irving tried to build the new American nation's soul by recreating history and giving it living, imaginative life. He chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the discovery of the New World, the westward exploration and the first president and national hero. His short story, Rip Van Winkle, is considered the first American folktale. It is the story of a man who slept for twenty years, waking to find that the colonies had become independent, that the most important event in the American history had happened, ironically, while he was sleeping. Rip's loss of identity is an important issue in the story. He goes to sleep as a faithful subject of His Majesty King George III, and wakes up to democracy, to find that he has become a free American citizen.
