History Literature / TheLegendOfSleepyHollow

* AntiHero: Ichabod himself. Despite displaying a number of positive traits, Irving focuses largely on his flaws; envy, avarice, gluttony, and sloth.

* BrainsEvilBrawnGood: Ichabod, the intellectual schoolmaster, is portrayed as weak-willed, venal and effeminate, while Brom Bones, the barrel-chested stallion-breaker, is portrayed as honorable, or at least more honorable than Ichabod.

* GreenEyedMonster: Ichabod is portrayed as having "large green glassy eyes", and as being envious of Baltus van Tassel's wealth.

* HorrorStruck: Averted in the original, in that Ichabod fervently believes in all supernatural phenomena -- even when (as it is strongly implied) the phenomena ''aren't'' supernatural. Later adaptations sometimes play the trope straight.

* {{Jerkass}}: Ichabod gets less and less appealing as the story goes on, peaking when he thinks of how, once he's married Katrina and accquired her father's great wealth, he'll tell everyone he associated with as a schoolteacher to screw off.

* In 1949 the story was paired with a pared-down version of Kenneth Grahame's ''TheWindInTheWillows'' in {{Disney}}'s ''[[Disney/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad]]''; the story is narrated (with interspersed songs) by BingCrosby. It's actually surprisingly faithful to the original story -- Brom Bones gets his PetTheDog moments, and Ichabod's fate is left still ambiguous. The animation of the chase scene is particularly impressive, and influenced several later Disney films, notably ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast''.

* GreenEyedMonster: Ichabod is portrayed as having " large green glassy eyes", and as being envious of Baltus van Tassel's wealth.

* In 2012 Creator/{{Fox}} aired the series Series/SleepyHollow, in which the Headless Horseman is actually Death, one of the four HorsemenOfTheApocalypse, and Ichabod is brought BackFromTheDead to stop him.

* The upcoming ''[[Franchise/TheSmurfs The Smurfs: The Legend Of Smurfy Hollow]]'' from Sony Pictures Animation.

* AntiHero: Ichabod himself. Despite displaying a number of positive traits, Irving focuses largely on his flaws; envy, avarice, gluttony sloth.

** "He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."

* Brains:Evil;Brawn:Good: Ichabod, the intellectual schoolmaster, is portrayed as weak-willed, venal and effeminate, while Brom Bones, the barrel-chested stallion-breaker, is portrayed as honorable, or at least more honorable than Ichabod.

* Antihero: Ichabod himself. Despite displaying a number of positive traits, Irving focuses largely on his flaws; envy, avarice, gluttony sloth.
* Antivillain: Brom Bones is depicted as displaying all the qualities of a Great American Hero: bravery, recklessness, and square-jawed, good ol' boy charm. As such, even though the entire story (in one interpretation) hinges on the consequences of a prank he pulls, the reader never loses sympathy with him.

* Anti-hero: Ichabod himself. Despite displaying a number of positive traits, Irving focuses largely on his flaws; envy, avarice, gluttony sloth.
* Anti-villain: Brom Bones is depicted as displaying all the qualities of a Great American Hero: bravery, recklessness, and square-jawed, good ol' boy charm. As such, even though the entire story (in one interpretation) hinges on the consequences of a prank he pulls, the reader never loses sympathy with him.

* ''SleepyHollow'', perhaps the best known version in recent times, is a TimBurton adaptation which deliberately takes considerable liberties with the original Story, making it radically DarkerAndEdgier. Johnny Depp's Constable Ichabod Crane is a much more heroic figure than Irving's gawkish, pedantic, cowardly schoolmaster, and rather than be cripplingly superstitious, he's a pioneer of forensic sciences who uses reason and deduction to solve crimes and insists that a live human is behind the Horseman murders. In fact, he's basically the ''only'' non-superstitious character in the film, at least during the earlier acts. There are also subtle themes of the complexity of religion, reason, and the supernatural woven throughout the film.

* RoundedCharacter: Although his most-remembered trait is his greed, Ichabod is actually a rather multi-faceted character. Beyond his selfish ambitions, Ichabod is also superstitious, imaginative, has a (typically unhealthy) sense of curiosity, and even has some [[PetTheDog positive traits]] thrown in for good measure.

* AmbiguousSituation: The ending deliberately leaves many things ambiguous. Was Ichabod killed by the Horseman or did he just flee from Sleepy Hollow and move somewhere else? Was the Horseman actually supernatural or was it just Bron trying to scare Ichibod off? It's up to the reader to decide and what answer they decide on completely changes the story.

* AmbiguousSituation: The ending deliberately leaves many things ambiguous. Was Ichibod killed by the Horseman or did he just flee from Sleepy Hollow and move somewhere else? Was the Horseman actually supernatural or was it just Bron trying to scare Ichibod off? It's up to the reader to decide and what answer they decide on completely changes the story.

* ''SleepyHollow'', perhaps the best known version in recent times, is a TimBurton adaptation which takes considerable liberties with the original Story, making it radically DarkerAndEdgier. Jonny Depp's secret agent Ichabod Crane is a much more heroic figure than Irving's grotesque, pedantic, cowardly schoolmaster. There is also a subtle theme of the complexity of religion, reason, and the supernatural. This adaptation is not without its individual merits.

* In 1972 a short animated version appeared, [[{{Narrator}} narrated]] by John Carradine.

* In 1949 the story was paired with a pared-down version of Kenneth Grahame's ''TheWindInTheWillows'' in {{Disney}}'s ''[[Disney/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad]]''; the story is narrated (with interspersed songs) by BingCrosby. It's actually surprisingly faithful to the original story -- Brom Bones gets his PetTheDog moments, and Ichabod's fate is left still ambiguous. The animation of the chase scene is particularly impressive, and influenced several later Disney films, notably ''BeautyAndTheBeast''.

'''"The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow"''' (also known informally and somewhat incorrectly as "The HeadlessHorseman") is a short story by American author Washington Irving, first published in February 1820 as part of a series of stories later collected as ''The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.'' As with a number of Irving's stories, the plot is based on German legend (particularly in the re-told versions of Karl Musäus), transplanted to a New York state setting, and mingled with Irving's genial satire of human, and particularly American, foibles.

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