Commentaires sur la nouvelle The Gift of the Magi, de O. Henry PDF

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Commentaires sur la nouvelle The Gift of the Magi, de O. Henry dans le cadre du cours de L1 de littérature anglophone...

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Littérature anglophone Commentary "The Gift of the Magi", O. Henry (1905) The excerpt studied here is the final scene of "The Gift of the Magi", a short story written in 1905 by O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter. He was an American writter and is mostly remembered for his short stories which often had surprise endings. There are only two characters in this excerpt, Jim and Della. She has bought him a Christmas gift by selling her long and beautiful hair and is waiting for Jim to come home. The scene takes place in their flat, which seems to be in New York City ("that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window" line 35/36). This commentary will first study the role of the narrator, the move on to throw light on the irony of the character's sacrifices, then finally focus on the biblical theme and the moral of this story. The story has an external third person omniscient narrator. Direct characterization is used to demonstrate the poverty of the two characters on lines 1 ("he looked thin") and 2 ("he needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves"). The narrator is also intrusive and seems to address the reader directly as we can see in two instances, first from "for ten seconds" on line 23 to "illuminated later on" on line 27, then in the last paragraph starting on line 52. This allows the narrator to stop the action and shre some of his ideas or point of view. Moreover, in the first occurence, it serve as a turning point for Jim : "out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake" (l. 23). The last paragraph serves as the moral, which will be tackled in the last section of this commentary. Since we know the characters are poor, they need to find ways to make money to buy Christmas presents. Della cuts and sells her hair so that she can buy her husband Jim a silver chain for his pocket watch. But in the meantime, Jim sells his watch to buy his wife a set of combs that "Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window" (l. 35/36). They each sacrifice their most precious possession to be able to buy each other the best Christmas gifts. We do not get to see how Della feels about the irony of this situation, but Jim seems to take it well, as it is shown on line 47 : "Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hand under the back of his head and smiled". By sacrificing an individual possession they show how much they love each other, and it brings them closer together. The story can be seen as a parable, just as in the Bible. It has the same technique : the telling of story to illustrate a moral which can be found at the end of this short story from line 52 to 58. The analogy with the Bible's parables gives this story more significance and magnitude. Here, Jim and Della take the role of "magi", who give away splendid treasures. This create a sharp contrast between the rich Magi from the Bible and the extremely poor couple, but also conveys to show how the items they have given away were precious to them. They both demonstrate they are prepared to sacrifice a prized possession to give something to the other. Their 1/2

selfless love for each other is what they actually get and this is not something that can be bought, therefore it makes their gifts much more valuable. This is why the narrator at the end says that Jim and Della "are the magi" (l. 58). This commentary has drawn attention to the role of the narrator in this story and the different narrative techniques used here. Then it addressed the irony of the characters' sacrifices, eventually showing how it deepened their love. Ultimately, it dealt with the similarities between parables and this short story along with the use of religious figures to draw both parallelism and contrast with the characters. This story has inspired a lot of writers, and numerous stories share the same scheme.

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