William Sydney Porter, or simply O'Henry

    

    Porter was born on September 11, 1862 in North Carolina, but moved to Texas in the 1880s. He worked as a draftsman, a bookkeeper, a bank teller and a newspaper columnist until 1898, when he was sent to prison for embezzlement (from his days as a teller in Austin). After more than three years in jail, O. Henry moved to New York to work full time as a writer. 

    O'Henry wrote colorful short stories with surprising and ironic twists. He wrote in a humorous style and, as in "The Gift of the Magi," often ironically used coincidences and surprise endings. William pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class New Yorkers.

     His most famous works are: "The Gift of the Magi", "The Ransom of Red Chief", "A Retreived Reformation". O'Henry's most representative collection was probably The Four Million.

He died on June 5, 1910.

     On September 2012 there has been the 150th anniversary  since the birth of O.Henry. Watch this video - a piece of news about the celebration of his birthday.

   I also like these creative quotations from O'Henry. 

 

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.

My first investigations

    Good evening everybody) Today I have created my blog. I have never used it before so it's like exploration for me, searching for lots of new info how to do this or that. I have found some of my fellow students, it's a pity that only a few of them,but I hope that till the end of the week or during the second one my list of people to communicate with will grow longer.

It's really instructive to create your own blog and be here and communicate. It wasn't a great difficulty for me to create my own blog. Thanks to the link it was rather simple. As for me I see lots of advantages of using it. Firstly, we'll be able to exchange our ideas and information. Secondly, we'll present our analises of stories and other people will be able to view them and comment. We'll unite studying, communication and it is really cute)

    Now I know the basics of using this blogger. As for the story that I will analize, it is "The Gift of the Magi" by O'Henry http://www.americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/the-gift-of-the-magi. There are different reasons why I chose it, but the strongest one is that last I wrote my course paper in literature study analizing humour in short stories by O'Henry. I was so absorbed in it and it was so interesting for me that I decided to continue my investigation.

    The title "The Gift of the Magi" really induces me to read the story. It's so mysterious and I think that the story will be connected somehow with the Bible. As far as I remember the magi gave gifts to baby Jesus: gold, frankincense and myrrh as a sign of their love and loyalty. If the story is somehow connected with the Bible it will be fascinating and extraordinary. I hope that my expectations will come true and after reading the story I will not only find  answers to my questions but also some thought-provoking ideas.