The Gift of the Magi

She refers to the airmen’s fair hair, stressing the youth of the airmen and their innocence but now they are dead. It represents the inhumanity of war as the airmen were still youthful and innocent and there was no need for their lives to be taken.

Jim and Della perform an act of selfless love by their willingness to give something that held great value to them in order to get special presents for each other on Christmas. They do all of this out of love for the other. However, you will see that these gives prove to end up having no use in the end but that is not the main point. The main point is that although this ironic situation occurs, they both find joy in the thought that they would do this for each other. This love that they have for each other is far greater value than any gift that could be given. Jim doesn’t overreact or get angry with this conclusion.

The poem begins with Aurora Leigh's observations of her aunt. "Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight/ As if for taming

“corrugated with a thousand caramel wrinkles”, her hair “looking flour dusted” and staring with her

O’Connor writes “Two wings of gray hair protruded on either side of her florid face, but

In the passage “Hairs,” by Sandra Cisneros, the author uses a childlike style to create the effect of comfort. In other words, the author is describing her family’s hair differences and her personal experiences with her mother’s hair in a very playful and childlike way. The author uses sentence length and structure to convey unorganized thoughts. This allows the author to speak on her family’s hair, specifically her mother’s, with the reader interpreting it as her pure thoughts. It’s a very uneducated and erroneous grammar structure, such as the use of run-on sentences. The reader is then invoked with a sense of playfulness and unseriousness. The author also uses word choice in her style to help convey the effect. Words like “little candy circles,”

Conflict is opposing actions, ideas, and decisions that hold a plot together. Clugston (2014) states “Conflict is the struggle that shapes the plot in a story” (4.1 Plot, para. 4). Conflicts are also encountered in most of the literature we read for pleasure. It can create personal connections and instill deeper meanings to our experiences as we read, especially if we can relate what is read to our personal life.

The comparison O. Henry makes between the story of Jim and Della and that of the Magi is rather relevant as the Magi were the ones who are credited with being the origins of the “giving nature” of the Christmas season. In this story, we see a man and a woman so blinded by love that they are willing to make ultimate sacrifices for the happiness of the other. Similar to the Magi, Della and Tim put each other before themselves and through their generosity and considerable lengths they both went to achieve that generosity is something more admirable than any materialistic gift they could ever offer each other, thus making the uselessness of their gifts irrelevant.

Similar to “The Cask of Amontillado,” O. Henry includes dramatic irony so the reader becomes emotionally connected to the story and pities its characters throughout “The Gift of the Magi”. It is known that both Jim and Della sold their most prized possessions in order to buy each other a Christmas present. The first instance of dramatic irony is when Della opened her present revealing an exceedingly thoughtful gift from her husband. “White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all comforting powers of the lord of the flat. For there lay The Combs- the set of combs side and back that

To understand the differences and similarities between the Gift of the Magi and the sesame street version of it, it is necessary to look at the main concepts of both stories. The Gift of the Magi is a classic story, adapted into many T.V shows and movies in modern day. The original story is about a young married couple in New York city during the 1900's that sell their most prized possessions to buy something for their significant other. The item that they buy for each other though is for the other's most prized item, therefor, they can't use their gift because they don't have their prized possession anymore. The main concept of the sesame street version is two friends that live together, that trade their favorite item belonging to

The comb can represent women desire to look better, and she almost died because of her vanity, pursuing exterior beauty.

Love is a defining force for Della and Jim too, overshadowing the poor condition of their finances. Jim and Della do not have much. They would most certainly be considered to be in the lower class, living in a little $8 a week flat in the city and going from a sufficient income of $30 a week to a less than adequate $20 a week with Jim in need of a new overcoat and pair of gloves (Henry). Henry articulates how their love for each other transforms their drab house and surroundings and gray circumstances into a warm and inviting refuge called home. “One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all Della had,” not nearly enough to get a gift worthy of her beloved Jim (Henry). She desires nothing but to please him and considers him worthy of something

Della is willing to cut her gorgeous and flowy hair so that she can afford a Christmas present for her husband Jim. Della’s hair is admired by everyone, but she would have felt guilty if she did not get Jim a present. When Jim is standing before Della and her shortened hair, she gives him a fob chain. Also, Della explains to him that she, “couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving [him] a present” (Henry 264). Della has an altruistic disposition whereas Madame Loisel has a selfish and greedy personality.

“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.

Situational irony is another element that is present throughout the short story. Della and her husband both buy each other gifts for Christmas at the end of the story. Ironically, Della and her husband bought each other gifts for what they gave up: Della bought her husband a wrist watch strap and Jim sold his watch to buy Della the combs she wanted for her hair. In the short story, Jim is seen grieving about the fact that she had cut her hair off, “I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on,” (O. Henry 121). The ending is situational irony because the reader was expecting that Della would buy her