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, which is regarded as the law of the jungle universally. Right and wrong are confused, good and evil are disordered; Materialism and individualism dominate people’s mind. This writing technique makes his work enjoy the fame of “Smile with Tears”. However, to illustrate humanity, O. Henry perfectly combines wry humor and twist ending. In “The Cop and the Anthem”, Soapy unfortunately trieds every means to make trouble in order to be arrested by the police to be sent to “the island”. He fails to cause the attention of the policemen because “they seemed to regard him as a king who could not do wrong.” [23](P66)
On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moves uneasily, when wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husband. When Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. [24](P21)
Such examples can be found throughout the story. These sentences seem to be talked about very delightly and casually to make the story appear to be a comedy. But meanwhile, we can also feel the sadness and helplessness of the hero Soapy. Readers are seduced by humor language and stories plots step by step, but finally cannot help laughing, but with pitiful tears.
Another example:
But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long—enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador. [25](P42)
The humorous paragraph describes the congested conditions of a room where the hero and heroin live in the “The Service of Love”, the story tells of an earnest young pair of art students, the Lattabees, who prop up each other’s courage when their funds run out by pretending to have lucked into a steady income from their professional skill in painting and music. But it turns out that Delia’s service has been ironing shirts in a laundry while Joe has been firing the furnace in the same building. Readers are not surprised to find out how precious their genuine love for each other is. Monetarily they were poor, but they are mentally wealthy. We may laugh with tears after finishing reading the story. O. Henry carries an abundant good humor with hum and sees the bright and amusing side of things. O. Henry is not the comic wit that explodes the reader into a huge guffaw of laughter and vanishes. His humor and twist ending are of that deep quality that smiles at life itself and mingles our amusement with our tears.
Ⅴ.Conclusion
O. Henry focuses on the poverty-stricken life and spiritual depression of common people. He takes great sympathy on them, with dissatisfaction with the greediness of the rich and the noble. O. Henry is adept at seizing and grasping the typical scenes in life, in which each episode of the life of the characters that had been in dilemma and confronted fatal decision was presented. Through this, he not only chiefly portrays the hero’s mentality but also fully reveals the inner contradiction of life. Finally, the human virtues and defects emerge from the twist ending. That not only arouses readers ponder about the humanity but also earns O. Henry’s story fame of “smile with tears”. Henry not only widens the experience of his readers, he also restates the verities that exist wherever people continue to strive for truth and beauty in life. The humanity reflected from the twist ending makes his stories at their best an influence for the furthering of those ideals that still tend to command the allegiance of civilized men. O. Henry is the “founder of American stories”. His works are like a mirror of American society at that time. A multiple of reflections are rippling through the years passing by. The plots in O. Henry’s works appear to be nothing special at first glance. Nevertheless, read those to the ending and you will find something unusual out of what seems to be too ordinary. I would like to say, his works are full of depth in portraying an unfathomable humanity of character.
In a nutshell, O. Henry’s artistic charms will everlast and be viewed as a perpetual encyclopedia of American life. His works are the best urn of humanity as well as the reflection of society from the twist ending.
Bibliography
[1] Taylor, Barry(ed.) American Short Stories[M]. Longman Group Limited .1969.P61
[2] Stephen Leacock. The Literary Structure of an O. Henry Short[A].
http://mclibrary.nhmccd.edu/lit/crit9.html
[3] 张贞梅. 从<爱的牺牲>和<麦琪的礼物> 评欧·亨利的艺术手法[J].山西：淮北煤师院学报, 2001.NO.1: P128
[4] 马军. 论欧·亨利的创作风格[J]. 沈阳：沈阳师大学报, 2005.NO.3. P28
[5] 赵莉， 黄春妮. 欧·亨利作品导读 [M] . 武汉：武汉大学出版社 2003. P3,
[6]同[5]：P41
[7] O. Henry. 欧·亨利短篇小说 [M]. 青海：青海出版社, 2004. P59
[8]同[7]：P71
[9]同[7]：P23
[10]同[5]：P73
[11] 朱文，朱碧恒. 欧·亨利作品赏析 [M]. 北京：中国和平出版社 1996. P66
[12] O. Henry and Twist Ending[A]
http://blog.hjenglish.com/zymi2001/archive/2005/02/16/14366.aspx
[13] 欧·亨利. 欧·亨利短篇小说精选 [M].北京：人民文学出版社, 上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] 下一页
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