Expressive means and stylistic devices in the "Gift of the Magi"

     Now I have come up to the most interesting part of my analysis of the story – defining the theme and the idea of the story “The Gift of the Magi”.

I would present the theme of the story in such-like formula: 

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     I think that these 4 pictures represent the theme of the story wholly. The themes are:

• Love knows no bounds.
• Sacrifice as proof of wisdom.
• Wealth is not a material thing, but love that is spiritual.
•  Femininity is great power.

     In the story there is situational irony:

“I could not have lived through Christmas without giving you a present”.

“Being wise, their gifts no doubt wise ones… two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other”.

It  helps us to draw a parallel between Magi and ordinary Jim and Della – two foolish children.

     Simile is used to describe Della’s greatest possession her hair: “Della’s beautiful hair fell like a cascade of brown water”. Her hair is a wavy as it is like a cascade, its colour is like brown water.

    Comparison is noticed: “That made her looks like a truant schoolboy.” After having had her hair cut Della can be compared in her appearance to a truant schoolboy: wandering and straying. Short hair gave her the look of a boy, not of a woman, her look was deprived of femininity.

    Della is full of emotions which are described with the help of metaphor: “There was clearly nothing to do but flop down and… howl. So Della did it”. Della had nothing to do but howl – dolefully like a wolf. 

     A repetition of adjectives “grey”: “…looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard” helps to create the atmosphere of sadness. It is also an incomplete sentence because the conjunction “at” in “walking a grey fence” is omitted. Another example of repetition  of the conjunction “nor” to describe Jim’s shock when he saw Della: “It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for”. Here is also anticlimax (nouns “anger – surprise – disapproval – horror) to describe Della’s relief from Jim’s reaction. Della’s overflow of emotions is can be noticed with the usage of oxymoron: she said that her hair grows “awfully fast”.

       An example of anaphora which is used to emphasize the repeated unit: “On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat”. It used to show that Della was categoric and she knew and was sure in what she was doing.

      The metaphor: “tripped by on rosy wings” describes the mood of Della. She was happy, she was ready to seek for a present for Jim.

    Antithesis is used to describe opposing feelings: “And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails”.

    The case of periphrasis in naming Jim “lord of the flat” stress that it was he who was who was the breadwinner in the family; “employment of all the comforting powers” is the periphrasis which means that Della needed Jim to hug her and comfort, to calm her down.

      These are the main stylistic devices which I noticed after thorough scanning of the story. 

    

Characters in "The Gift of the Magi"

Starting to read the story we meet the first character – Della. She is a housewife and she copes with it quite well. She is thrifty and realistic cause she sees the harsh reality, she saved one or two pennies by “bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied”. This is a case of metaphor. Della was not simply demanding or asking, she was “bulldozing” like a powerful tractor. But at the same time she is romantic. She is ready to give her greatest possession to buy a present for the most important person In her life – Jim. With the help of simile her hair is “like a cascade of brown waters”, it was so wavy and smooth. Despite her “old brown jacket, old brown hat” she still had a “brilliant sparkle in her eyes”. Her exploit is described as “generosity added to love – “a mammoth task” – a case of hyperbole, which is used to show her love to Jim and her ability to pass serious decisions. She is really proud of herself. She always wanted to look nice for Jim. She is rather pious: “she had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things”.

Another person we meet in the story is Madame Sofronie. O. Henry provides a rich characterization with only one sentence: "Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the 'Sofronie. She is blunt: when Della asks whether she would buy her hair, she says, "I buy hair" and brusquely tells Della to take her hat off so she can see it. She offers Della twenty dollars for her hair.

Mr. James Dillingham, at home called Jim is the only breadwinner for the family. But Della didn’t view him like that, she saw him as a person: “he needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves” but she gave him a platinum fob chain to show that she was cognizant of things that were valuable for him. Jim was always punctual – he was never late. He was rather serious. It is described with the help of simile: “as immovable as a setter” He was proud of his watch but at the end of the story we see that Della and her beauty are much more precious for him. He was so shocked to see Della with a short haircut that he even didn’t notice his present.

They are the real Magi, though living in the real world, they are higher of reality, there is something divine in them.