Gift of the Magi. Squaring the circle.

O. Henry was the pen name of the American writer William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910). O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.(unexpected conclusion)

O. Henry's stories frequently have surprise endings. In his day, he was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote plot twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful. His stories are also known for witty narration.

Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses.

O. Henry's work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work is contained in Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories each of which explores some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, while advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another.

Gift of the Magi. Mr. James Dillingham Young (" Jim ") and his wife, Della, are a couple living in a modest flat. They each have one possession in which they take pride: Della's beautiful long, flowing hair and Jim's gold watch, which had belonged to his father and grandfather.

On Christmas Eve, with only $1.87 in hand, and desperate to find a gift for Jim, Della sells her hair for $20, and eventually finds a platinum fob chain for Jim's watch for $21. Happy to have found the perfect gift at last, she runs home and begins to prepare dinner.

When Jim comes home, he looks at Della with an expression “that she could not read, and it terrified her.” Della then admits to Jim that she sold her hair to buy him his present. Jim gives Della her present — an array of expensive combs for her hair (referred to as “The Combs”). Della then shows Jim the chain she bought for him, to which Jim says he sold his watch to get the money to buy her combs. Although Jim and Della are now left with gifts that neither one can use, they realize how far they are willing to go to show their love for each other.

“Squaring the Circle” is a 1908 short story that begins with “a discourse on geometry” (1273). After this surprise discourse, the third-person narrator launches into a comical tale of two men from Kentucky who are engaged in a feud (1274). The story is fairly brief and is filled with witty observations about American life at the time of its writing. These traits are common to all of the O. Henry stories that I’ve so far read. The “discourse” at the start of the story draws parallels between geometric concepts and the contrasting American lifestyles in rural and urban settings (1273). The narrator argues that straight lines and angles are the stuff of artifice and of humankind’s imprint on its surroundings (1273). On the other hand, he argues, “Nature moves in circles” (1273). This is an interesting analogy that the narrator extends several paragraphs in before switching over the main narrative. It forces the reader to think throughout the story about the traits and habits associated with Americans from rural versus urban areas.

The Kentucky feud results in lots of murder and bloodshed, which the narrator sarcastically refers to as the “pruning” of the Folwell and Harkness family trees (1274). Eventually, the narrator tells us, the feud resulted in each family having only a single surviving member (1274). The surviving Harkness, Cal, sets off for New York City to get away from his family’s murderous past, and Sam Folwell sets off to find him in these unfamiliar surroundings and exact his revenge (1274).

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