The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Summary and Analysis

Veracity in Storytelling

Veracity in storytelling is a defining theme of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The story is distantly removed from the reader—Crayon has found the story in Diedrich Knickerbocker’s papers, who is dead, and who at the end of the story writes that he heard it from an old gentleman, who claimed to not have even believed half of it himself, ultimately getting much of the story from primary or even other secondary sources. Thus, even where the story is told with confidence, the narrator has given us reasons to doubt evrything.

We become critical readers, unlike Crane, who believes the ghost stories he reads. The narrator also admits to complete ignorance of one of the defining moments of the story—Katrina’s imagined rejection of Ichabod—as well as to its ending.

He does, however, relay a scene which he can only have knowledge of if Crane (or the horseman) has told his story. There were no other witnesses.