My impressions after the first reading of the story.

    Today I have read the story by O' Henry "The Gift of the Magi" for the first time. The first question that arises is whether I liked it. The answer is that the story is really tremendous. I liked it greatly, despite  lots of unknown words as it is not an adaptation. I consulted the dictionary and found all unknown words. I grasped the general content of the extract and every single word and construction. I read the story for two times in order not to miss anything.
   In fact my expectations about the plot of the story were right. It's amazing how O' Henry could write a story with religious background. While reading the story  I retraced the themes of love, sacrifice, wealth, women and femininity. It is really unbelievable how strong love between people can be that they can sacrifice their most valuable things to bring joy to one another. Lots of questions arose in my head. One of them is whether it is wealth, or material gift that can bring joy? At the end of the story I understood that O' Henry wanted to show that only care and heed are of greater importance. Material things come and go back, we can sell, lose, exchande them, but spiritual world, feelings remain forever with us and show our attitude to each other. As for Della - she is a typical woman. "There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating." Della is overemotional, she cries. Della is impulsive, she always wants to look pretty for Jim to love her.
  While reading the story I had the feeling as if somebody is reading it to me. I don't know why, but somehow it was so. Probably this is because O'Henry broke some grammar rules, in order to emphasize some facts he starts sentences with them. The story goes like in chain: all sentences are interconnected.

  To my mind, Jim and Della are  like the magi: they gave each other the wisest gifts of all. There is irony in the story, craftly made by O'Henry. Remember the power and wealth of  Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. But Della and Jim are so proud of their possession that they think that those Biblical characters would be envious of them. I like such twists in the story cause they stimulate my imagination and make me think about the plot. I add video which I found in utube. I really like it cause it is made in the form of a cartoon.