Content

Chapter1 Introduction 4

Chapter 2 O. Henry ‘s article style--humor 4

2.1 O. Henry ‘s article style 4

Chapter3 Unique O-style ending method 5

3.1 Improbable Coincidence (The Gift of the Magi) 5

Chapter4 The Main Theme of O’Henry’s Works 6

Chapter 5 Conclusion 7

References 8

A Brief Review on O’Henry’s Works

摘要：欧.亨利，原名威廉.西德尼.波特,20世纪美国著名小说家，美国短篇小说创始人。被誉为世界上三大著名小说巨匠，与法国的莫泊桑，俄国的契诃夫齐名。他少年时曾一心想当画家，婚后在妻子的鼓励下开始写作。后再银行供职时出现账目问题而入狱，在服刑期间认真写作，并以“欧.亨利”为笔名发表了大量短篇小说。他的作品情节细腻。语言诙谐，结局往往出人意料。出人意料但却符合逻辑的故事结尾以及不拘一格文风在作品中最具亮点给读者留下深刻印象。而本论文的主要围绕他的著作，如《麦琪的礼物》，《最后一片叶子》，《警察与赞美诗》，分析其故事结尾与语言风格如何达到预想的效果和如何让作者的思想在作品中得到体现。

关键词：文风，欧.亨利式结尾,人性，社会现实

Abstract: O. Henry, one of the three most famous short-story writers in the world, enjoys equal status with Chekhov and Maupassant. Exquisite plot, wry humor and twist ending dominate his works. Those surprising but logical endings and article’s style are the most brilliant in all of the highlights. This thesis mainly analyses O. Henry’s surprising but logical endings and style of his famous works such as The Gift of the Magi , The Last Leaf an and The Cop and the Anthem.These O. Henry-style endings impress readers ,and at the same time ,help him express his ideas completely and vividly.So this thesis mainly analyses how O.Henry set the plot to achieve the desired ending effect,and how the twist ending help idea-expression.

Key Words: artistic styles, O. Henry-style ending, humanity; social reality

Chapter1 Introduction

O·Henry is commonly associated with the short story and the masterful ironic “O·Henry Twist”. A prolific writer, O·Henry wrote most often about New York City, where he spent his later years, He has been called “the American De Maupassant”. Years of hardships, vagrancy and prison supplied O·Henry with abundant material for writing. The tragedy in his own life —the bad luck that seemed to bind him —had taught him a chivalrous tenderness for the unlucky, a sympathetic understanding of the underdogs, and this compassion of his is evident in most of his short stories. O·Henry’s stories about New York City —the best of which are included in The Four Million—are his most famous. His works in.The Four Billionaire full of humor. His stories are amusing, flippant, flat and filled with irony and sentiment. Drawing directly on his experiences, he combined realism with a world of his own. Commonly recurring themes in O·Henry’s short stories are those of deception, mistaken identity, the effect of coincidence, the inexorable nature of fate, and the resolution of seemingly insurmountable difficulties separating two love it.Over recent hundreds of years, works of O·Henry’s have been published for several editions, and always attracting a great number of readers. O·Henry‟s writing is seen as straightforward and simple, written in plain language. His stories may rely on a sameness of plot, but the sharp, unexpected twist at the end is still his distinctive trademark today.(田2005:5)As readers, we like O·Henry’s stories very much because we can get much fun from them. Lively characters, humorous style, and the surprising ending which leave us endless thinking, are the main factors to attract and strike us.

Chapter 2 O. Henry ‘s article style--humor

2.1 O. Henry ‘s article style

O. Henry good at describing the United States in particular people living in New York. His novel, witty language, the result is often surprising; because of the many descriptions of the characters and full of life, as the "Encyclopedia of American life with humor." There are representative collection of short stories, "King and cabbage", "4,000,000" and "the fate of the road." Some of the famous, such as "love at the expense" and "Police and the Hymn," "rent furnished rooms" and "The Gift of the Magi" and "the last piece of rattan leaf" to make his reputation in the world.He is a writer with a unique style, humorous works, humorous wit, vivid descriptions, concise text. Vivid description of things from the profound understanding and extensive knowledge. He was good to observe things and the accumulation of knowledge. Good at capturing life Ironically, while the wealth to the philosophy of the dramatic scenes from the grasp of the subtle characteristics of the image using the language Painted, so that the people of flesh and blood, into the Xu-xu Health.

2.2 Humor

O. Henry once wrote: "the nature of my jokes is amiable, irony, and never make someone angry." This is his opinion of his humor, his satire, but again not ironic.he is on the basis of goodwill, and often contain the true meaning of life in accessible short stories . And another effect is that this kind of humor played down the tragic role, so readers are more likely to accept. In addition to the humorous irony, O. Henry is good at capturing the ironic and abound in life philosophy of dramatic scene, with the characteristics of writing outline of cartoon characters, the plot of the chrono set at the same time, the ending with unexpected knot,All this make readers in dismay want to find the deep connotation of the story, make the reader have to exclamation story of fair and reasonable, idea of exquisite. In addition to unxepecting ending ,the sequence in the novel text became O. Henry another feature of the nove.

In O’Henry’s short story “The Cop and the Anthem”, he makes use of the vocabulary mistake and hyperbole not only endowing figures with fresh image but also obtaining definite humorous effect. It’s a concrete display of the comedic writing style and at the same time it hints at the tragic fate of the protagonist.There is such a paragraph in the article:But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter’s eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.Soapy’s first “long for being arrested” plan is to eat extravagantly in a luxurious restaurant—“a roast duck is almost enough!” But as he sets foot inside the restaurant door, the head waiter’s eye falls upon his “decadent shoes”. Decadent is always used to describe life style or consciousness concept. The author uses it to describe Soapy’s broken shoes and exaggerates the actuality of that broken shoe to a laughable extent. Then the author also uses the humorous remarks “turn round that roast duck’s nearly being killed fate “to

indicate Soapy’s hope “to eat gratis is vanished.”

Chapter3 Unique O-style ending method

O. Henry's trademark is the surprising ending that each of his stories contains. He sets a story moving in one direction, and just when the reader is convinced of the general direction of the narrative, the story will be completely reversed.This kind of expected but reasonable ending which called O.Henry’s ending may be a little sorrowful but it still gives the readers some hope,which is so-called “O.Henry’s humor(smile with tears)”And if we look back to the total story, the ending seems logical and plausible. As a “plot-maker”, and designer of incident, he is an amazing genius. No one can do better than him to holds the reader in “suspense”More than that, the reader scarcely knows that he is suspended until the very close of the story. Just as turns on the lights and the whole tale is revealed in its entirety. He uses this device of dramatic and humorous effect in the short story collection The Four Million which including “The Gift of the Magi ”, and “The Cop and the Anthem”“the Service of Love”“The last Leaf.”He often stresses on something important but not the most important in his works.The most important part always seems to write incidentally,which been the most circumscriptive reader may if more it.When the stories end in a totally unexpected but reasonable way ,we can do nothing but cheer for O.Henry’s literary talent.

3.1 Improbable Coincidence (The Gift of the Magi)

The novel“The Gift of the Magi” is about a young couple that is short of money but desperately wants to buy each other Christmas gifts. Unknown to Jim, Della sells her most valuable possession, her beautiful hair, in order to buy platinum as the chain for Jim's watch; unknown to Della, Jim sells his most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for Della's hair. In the end ,both gifts became useless——short-haired Della got a comb and Jim got a chain for an already-sold watch. What a surprising coincidence! However, when we look back, we can find that O.Henry had already given us some suggestions.”Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair.” This description is related to how they got the money for gifts and what they bought for each other. The author used a casual and vague tone deliberately so that few people would think over its meaning before seeing the ending. So the ending turns out to be unexpected but reasonable.This coincidence is filled with complex emotions. People feel touched by the long lasting true love between the young couple and at the same time ,pity for them for their “unwise” gifts and their cruel bitter life.Though confronted with cruel reality and dull daily routine, Della and Jim can never change their eagerness toward love. To them the most valuable material possession is so slight and insignificant ,when compared with the spiritual possession of love romance.Perhaps the gifts were "unwise" as the author says, but, as he further writes, "let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest.”In The Gift of the Magi , we feel so pity that Della has her precious long hair cut. But to our surprise ,Jim has sold the watch to buy the jeweled tortoise-shell combs for her wife’s hair. O.Henry does not end on the note of irony and surprise but gives to what he calls his uneventful coincidence of two foolish children the appearance of a little parable with a significant meaning. The magi , he reminds the reader ,were wise men who brought gifts to the Christ child. As for Jim and Della, the are the magi. This is the ending of the story with O.Henry’s own style.

Chapter4 The Main Theme of O’Henry’s Works

In his works, O.Henry presents the panorama of the American people to readers with ironic and humorous tone. O.Henry is sympathetic with the poor; he praises the human virtues and denounces human defeats. Humanity, as the eternal theme of O.Henry’s works, endows his works with perpetual artistic charm. Human being has many virtues from ancient times to the present. They are kind, brave, honest, hard-working, polite, thrifty, generous, and hospitable and so on. Some people pay a great deal in order to maintain these virtues, they sacrifice their own happiness even life for the lofty love and friendship; they help others without asking for rewards and regard it as a pleasure; they give up their own treasure and chance to others etc. Such people bring love and fine things to the world; they are the ones who endow the world with light and hope.

Human beings have many defects, too. Sometimes they are lazy, rapacious, gluttonous, officious, vain, arrogant, shameless, cowardly, impetuous etc. They benefit themselves at the expense of others, they never show mercy and sympathy to the poor in order to make money, they realize their own aims by hook or by crook etc. Their evil deeds make the world vicious. By exposing the human defects and the dark sides of the world, O.Henry wants to awaken people’s conscience and deepest desire for all good things, so that people can use their efforts to save and cleanse the whole world.

O. Henry creates a short stories which he could dominate the world , and the world as a whole is with light grey. O. Henry won't go to describe the upper-class life :a luxury and dissipation life.In contrary, he makes his writing focuse on a nobody wholives in the small world.From this world , O. Henry have created the world according to his own idea, in which expresses his sympathy as well as hate, reveals a "law of the jungle" in a capitalist society or the rule of "the great fish eat the small one". All this, we can visit O. Henry's world from the point of O. Henry's works .

Besides social deformities, O. Henry didn't forget to find a unique legend in that society. In a corner of the world, there are blooming love, friendship, lofty flowers with a spirit of sacrifice , beautiful soul and divine emotion interweaves the bright side of another society. This is mainly can be found in the part of his representative works. In The Gift of the Magi ,husband and wife be able to give up the things they proud - long hair and watch, for the Christmas gifts. Although ultimately failed to achieve, but the flower of love is brightly blossoming.

For example:

But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy’s ears sweet music that caught and held him

transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fench.

The hymn of music brought homeless to restart the courage of life, which reflects the virtuous sideof society

Chapter 5 Conclusion

Totally speaking, in O. Henry’s works, the events of some short stories are arranged in the specific order which exceed reader’s normal expectation to the arrangement of those events in his works, make the ending unpredictable and strange. O. Henry deliberately designs the little tricks with words, for he is a master of language and not its slave. These unexpected but reasonable endings, in many conditions ,are the most remarkable parts in the novel. They also engage something profound in the human psyche and reflect social reality in that age . device that would become identified with his name. Wit, irony, cleverness, individuality and local color are also traditional earmarks of the typical O’Henry story. In addition, his warmth of human understanding and sympathy with the “underdog” give many of his stories poignancy. In memory of his great contribution to American literature, American literary circles set up Henry Award in 1918.

References

[1] Medrick, Fred. An introduction to American literature[M]. Henan University Press, 1985

[2] Hudson, Long. O Henry The Man and His Work[C]. New York:Russell and Russell, 1969

[3] O, Henry, Heart of the West[M]. New York: McClure, 1907

[4] O, Henry, The Four Million[M]. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company. 1906

[5] O, Henry, 欧亨利短篇小说

[6] 国宁 欧亨利式结尾的艺术魅力

[7] 书颖“含泪的笑”与“含笑的泪”浅析欧•亨利的主题

[8] 丽，黄春妮欧亨利作品导读 [M]. 大学2003 P3

[9] 欧亨利四百万 [M]. ：外语教学与研究，1988

欧亨利作品浅析 英语版