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    Ömer

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    Emre Çelik
    The short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry tells the story of a young married couple, Della and Jim Young, who are poor but wish to get each other gifts for Christmas. Della sells her long, beautiful hair to buy Jim a gold watch chain. However, unbeknownst to her, Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs for her hair. The story concludes with the two realizing they have sold their most valuable possessions to buy gifts for each other in a bittersweet twist ending highlighting their deep love and sacrifice.

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    Ömer

    Uploaded by

    Emre Çelik
    45 views1 page
    The short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry tells the story of a young married couple, Della and Jim Young, who are poor but wish to get each other gifts for Christmas. Della sells her long, beautiful hair to buy Jim a gold watch chain. However, unbeknownst to her, Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs for her hair. The story concludes with the two realizing they have sold their most valuable possessions to buy gifts for each other in a bittersweet twist ending highlighting their deep love and sacrifice.

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    The short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry tells the story of a young married couple, Della and Jim Young, who are poor but wish to get each other gifts for Christmas. Della sells her long, beautiful hair to buy Jim a gold watch chain. However, unbeknownst to her, Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs for her hair. The story concludes with the two realizing they have sold their most valuable possessions to buy gifts for each other in a bittersweet twist ending highlighting their deep love and sacrifice.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    45 views1 page

    Ömer

    Uploaded by

    Emre Çelik
    The short story "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry tells the story of a young married couple, Della and Jim Young, who are poor but wish to get each other gifts for Christmas. Della sells her long, beautiful hair to buy Jim a gold watch chain. However, unbeknownst to her, Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs for her hair. The story concludes with the two realizing they have sold their most valuable possessions to buy gifts for each other in a bittersweet twist ending highlighting their deep love and sacrifice.

    Copyright:

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    Stylistic Analysis of the short stories - The Gift of the Magi O’Henry

    The Gift of the Magi O’Henry - ‘The Gift of the Magi’ is famous for it’s poignancy and ironic,
    bittersweet ending.Written by O’Henry it is a little drama of mutual self–sacrifice between husband
    and wife. Unselfish love shared, regardless of the attendant difficulties or distractions , is the idea
    implied.The poignant twists and heartwarming conclusion of this story helps explain the lasting
    appeal of this story which breathed life into characters,creating moments that touch readers with
    their sensitivity and humanity.

    Plot Summary - Della and Jim Young, the main characters in ‘The Gift of the Magi’ are a young
    married couple with very little money living in a rented room in New York. They are quite poor.
    Christmas is only a day away and,for a Christmas present,Della wants to buy Jim a gold watch chain
    for his gold watch. They do not have much to be proud of her beautiful long hair.She explains to Jim
    how she sold her hair to buy him a nice Christman present. She had seen them in a shop before, but
    they were so expensive. The story concludes with an omniscient narrator praising the sacrifice and
    love of the young couple.

    Themes - This story has one main theme and several minor theme.Eight themes can be found in The
    Gift of the Magi. They are sacrifice,love,giving,beauty,identity,family, poverty , and wisdom. The Title
    of the story ‘The Gift of the Magi’ is quite significant.It is related to the theme and because of the
    unusualness it is foregrounded.

    Vocabulary - Some words in the story which are very meaningful are : cut back(phrasal verb),watch
    chain (noun), too bad(adjective),wigs(noun), and shocked(adjective) i.e., be very surprised and
    strange (strange).Strange means unusual.In this case it refers to the way Jim looks at Della in an un
    expected manner.Other significant words are: sacrificed(verb), and valuable (adjective).

    Characterization and dialogues - The lines spoken by the characters reveal their nature and
    personality. As you can see. ‘Will you buy my hair?’ This question asked by Della revealed the
    desperate attempts of Della to earn some some money in order to buy a gift for Jim, even if it meant
    selling the most precious thing that she had, the one that Jim admired about her.She is willing to
    sacrifice her beautiful hair to be able to buy a nice gift for her husband.

    Humor and Irony - O’Henry had a good sense of humor and liked to depict ironic situations.Most of
    the humor takes the form of irony.When an author uses a word or phase to mean the exact opposite
    of its literal or normal meaning, it is called ‘irony’.Sometimes , a whole situation is ironic. The auther
    sets up a scene one way , and then the opposite of what you might expect actually happens. ’The Gift
    of the Magi’ contains a plot twist that is a classic example of irony.Ironic coincidence is best seen in
    ‘The Gift of the Magi’.

    Twist Ending - ‘The Gift of the Magi’ is also known for its surprise ending. A surprise at the end of the
    story can bring an enormous amount of pleasure to readers.The ending in this story story is probably
    not what you predicted,but the outcome is reasonable in view of who the characters are.

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