O. Henry's ending

I have understood the term ”O’henry’s ending” after read the collection of his short story. It is usually surprising and unpredicted and it can usually pull the whole story to its climax and makes people to have endless thinking. This surprise usually occurs with sudden reversal or by making the hero fate appear unexpected results. But in a sense, it is not over and according with the practice of life. This surprise leads the unique artistic charm and can be identified as ”O’henry’s ending”.

For instance, the story “witches’ loaves” is a typical example for O’henry’s ending. It is a story happened in the United States: Miss Martha opened the bakery and she is very rich. There was a customer who went to her bakery twice a week to buy stale bread. On occasion, Miss Martha found that the customer's hands with a reddish brown stains and concluded that the customer is an poor artist so she put a big piece of butter on the bread the customer. Yet the customer is an architectural pattern designer and used stale bread to wipe the pencil print. As a result, the architectural figure became a waste because of the butter.

Life is just like that sometimes- kindness leads to the hate instead of gratitude. Martha put butter on the bread, is because of her sympathy and love, but misunderstood its usage. What I want to say even though your kindness is sometimes be understood or made something worse, never stop give your help and love to others because giving is always better than receiving.

The gift of the Magi

When I learned the “Boule De Suif" written by Maupassant in middle school. O.Henry was mentioned by my teacher at that time. They two are both great novelists. I have never got chance to read about him but recently I began to read the short story collection of O.Henry. The very first story attracts me with its Skillful arrangement and profound meaning.

The gift of the mainly tells the story of Christmas day, Della, who lived in the poor apartment with a impecunious life wanted to give her husband Jim a surprise. But she had only a dollar and seven cents. She then decided to sell the proud brown hair to buy a plain white gold watch chain, it can match on Jim's gold watch. At the same time, Jim sold the watch to buy Della a set of combs. So when both of them got the surprises, the gifts seemed not useful to them. However, what they got was the selfless love from each other. Although on the surface they gave up their own most precious things, I deeply feel that they love each other so much that encourage them to make these choices. It really warms my heart in such a frigid winter with a moved story like that. Just like I was told, love is understanding, love is forgiveness but love is mostly sacrifice. The two people in love would like to do anything for their lover even lose their lives. The love is not only the love between lovers make me touched, but also is defined as the love between all us by helping each other. I believe: as long as our hearts full of love, our world will be more beautiful tomorrow.