SOURCE: “Irving's Headless Hessian: Prosperity and the Inner Life,” in American Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 2, Pt. 1, Summer, 1963, pp. 167-75.

In the following essay, Bone considers the theme of materialism in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

While the body of this essay is concerned with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” I have tried to touch upon a central theme in our national letters: the relentless pressure of commodities on the American imagination. Walden is the classic statement of this theme. Thoreau went to the woods to escape the pressure of house and barn and mortgage; to free his soul from the tyranny of commodities. Since his aim was to confront essentials, his first requirement was to reduce the clutter of worldly goods which threatened to forestall the act of contemplation.

Nothing would seem more remote from contemporary sensibility than this ascetic strain. Yet consider the voluntary poverty of the...