The Gift Of The Magi O Henry Analysis

In "The Gift of Magi," Della and Jim sacrifice their prized possessions for each other and for love. Irony is represented in this story when Della and Jim both get each other gifts that mean a lot to each other. However, what they did not realize is that when Della cut her hair to to buy Jim a chain for his watch, she was unaware that Jim was going to sell his watch to buy her combs for her hair. The irony of their gift exchange is monumental as their unconditional love for one another took over for their own personal possession. Jim exclaims, “I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first." The magi which are described as wise men also signifies irony because Della and Jim's presents were more than wise. They represented that a gift does not need to be expensive to have value. A gift can be more meaningful just by the thought.

We often rely on imagery, a literary device that uses vivid descriptions and appeals to the senses, in our storytelling to point out the important facts in our stories. It helps our audience picture the scene and understand the severity of the situation. In my opinion, a well-written scene can be incredibly meaningful and thought-provoking with the help of imagery, sometimes even more so than a photograph. In literature, this is no different. Authors will describe characters and events in great detail when they feel it is important to the story. They will use imagery to point out character traits, themes, symbols, and motifs. A good author paints you a picture so you can imagine the places, colors, expressions, textures, with all the fine details.

Right near the beginning of the story, the instance of imagery is found. One example, an unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore (Connell 20), is a phenomenal use of imagery, as it creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind. Richard Connell does an adequate job of conjuring thoughts of a thick, wild, and scary jungle just beckoning for someone to come in. The river of glaring gold light that poured out (Connell 20) is a powerful use of imagery, as it uses descriptors such as glaring, gold, and poured. Connell almost makes it seem like the light materialized as it came out of the door, which makes it very interesting to read and picture. The author was very efficient in his use of imagery because the descriptors painted a very clear picture. Imagery is just the icing on the cake because it adds so much quality and description to the

By comparing the “majesty of heaven” to “earthly kings”, Henry is appealing to ethos, or the audience’s concept of ethics.

This leads to her idea of selling her most prized possession: her hair, to get Jim his present. Meanwhile, Jim decides to sell his most prized possession which was a pocket-watch that was passed down from his grandfather to his father and then to him. He sells that watch and buys Della a set of beautiful tortoise shell combs for her hair. Thus leading to the use of situational irony in which they both receive gifts for something they gave up in order to give the other a gift.

In the film Regarding Henry, Henry Turner depicts a more complex Id and Superego, that is capable of having positive and negative qualities on each side. Through complex character development throughout the film, Turner creates a two sided Id and Superego. After seemingly changing personality traits, due to a freak accident, Turner’s views on life are changed after a complete memory loss.

Another example of imagery in the story is when the author used it to describe Emily when she ask for poison to the druggist.“still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyes ockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers face ought to look”. The author makes emphasis in Emily’s face and eyes meaning that she is lost in her own world and foreshadows that Emily would use the poison for something wrong.

This strategy, parallelism, gives a strong emotional uproar to Henry's audience. Henry efficiently uses parallelism to build his argument and fires up the emotions of his

The author uses imagery to interest the reader in her story that may seem mundane without the imagery. An example of this happening is when Jeannette is going to her new school in Welch it was her first day and the teacher picks on her because she did not have to give the school her records to her not having them as that is happening a tall girl stabs her out of nowhere“I felt something sharp and painful between my shoulder blades and turned around. The tall black girl with the almond eyes was sitting at the desk behind me.

Tom Walker sat at his bedside feeling rather melancholy for he had not much to do but be chided at by his notorious witch of a wife. They both lived in their humble abode of an apartment in the middle of a city but they had a sublime view that overlooked the scenery of the domicile's dumpsters. They lived poorly, just barely getting by to afford a couple gallons of gas. Tom grew a hatred for almost everyone around and had only a handful of “friends”, he believed that money was the most valuable and important thing in his life.

First and foremost, Willa Cather and Mary Austin both employ beautiful imagery in their writings to recreate the landscape of the story they are telling, which heightens the understanding and appreciation for their writings. Their use of imagery is specific to appealing to their audience’s visual senses. In My Antonia, for example, Willa Cather describes the landscape at a particular moment by saying, “One afternoon we were having our reading lessons on the warm, grassy bank where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there was a shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little horsepond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found tall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy green” (Cather 29). My Antonia has these descriptive passages throughout it, which enables the reader to feel part of the book. Likewise, Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain also utilizes imagery: Mary Austin says, “the mountains are steep and the rains are heavy, the pool is

Imagery is a vivid illustration in the mind of the audience. For example on page 3, it says “...Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into her sockets, but still reminded me of the mom she’d been when I was a kid, swan-driving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud.” This quote is explaining how even though her mother is much different then other people’s mothers, Jeannette still sees her as herself. The mother that couldn’t drive very good, the one that like to pant all the time, and the one that love to read Shakespeare

The twists and turns of the plot as it unfolds within O. Henry 's “The Gift of the Magi” are what simply captivate the reader in such a short amount of pages. The story of Jim and Della on a cold Christmas Eve at the turn of 20th century America is centered around what is remarkably relevant to what many readers have experienced in their own lives; the inevitable stresses, sacrifices, and joys of the holiday season.

Imagery is widely used in O'Connor's story, which makes the characters and surroundings seem lifelike. In the depiction of the grandmother the reader can visual see the woman sitting in the car waiting on the others to arrive. "Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had penned a purple spray of violets containing a sachet." These are a few phrases of description that O'Conner used to describe the old

“My purpose is to show that in every human heart there is an innate tendency towards a respectable life; that even those who have fallen to the lowest depths in the social scale would, if they could, get back to the higher life…”(Rollins 7-8 ). O`Henry came up with this philosophy when writing his many different, entertaining stories. “The Gift of the Magi” was initially published in 1906 in O`Henry`s second collection of stories. “The Gift of the Magi” is a perfect story to illustrate how people do anything for the ones they love. The main characters each sell their most valued possession in order to buy the other the perfect Christmas present. They each bought the other something to complement their prized possession. Ironically, they had both sold their prized possession to get the other a gift.However, they bought gifts that were now useless to one another. Themes have some aspect of life, general truth, or moral that is shown throughout the story by the author. The themes in this short story really stand out to the reader. The way in which the two main characters demonstrate their selflessness for each other helps to emphasize the three major themes: poverty, love, and sacrifice.