Roads of Destiny

O. Henry is interested as well in what might be called the moment of choice: the
decision to act, speak, or dress in a way which seems to determine the whole course of
a life. The title story of the volume Roads of Destiny, a story allegorical in nature,
suggests that the choice is not so much among different fates as among different
versions of the same fate. Environment, in short, determines character, unless some
modicum of self-sacrificing love as in The Gift of the Magi intervenes. More concretely,
O. Henry saw poverty and exploitation as the twin evils of urban life. Often cited for his
sympathetic portrayal of the underpaid store clerk who struggles to survive, he is, as
well, a biting critic of those who perpetuate an inhumane system to satisfy personal
greed or lust. An Unfinished Story, for example, castigates an aging lady-killer who is
a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how
long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and
tea. Piggy, with whom O. Henry himself ruefully identified, preyed on shop girls by
offering them invitations to dinner. The working girl might thus keep her conscience and
starve, or sell herself and eat: This was her condition as well as her choice.

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O. Henry Essay - O. Henry Short Fiction Analysis

O. Henry Short Fiction Analysis

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O. Henrys widely varied background provided not only plots for his tales but also characters
drawn from all walks of life. Ham in The Hiding of Black Chief, Caesar in A Municipal
Report, and Lizzie in The Guilty Party are only isolated examples of O. Henrys proficiency
in creating a vivid sense of the texture of language for the reader by reproducing native dialect,
be it Western, southern, or even New Yorkese. This linguistic sensitivity contributes to O.
Henrys versatility as a local colorist, as does his literary self-education. Echoes of Charles
Dickens appear in Elsie in New York, allusions to Greek and Roman mythology in Hygeia at
the Solito and The Reformation of Calliope, and parodic references to Arthur Conan Doyle in
The Adventure of Shamrock Jolnes.
O. Henrys popularity stems not only from his depiction of commonplace events and human
responses but also from the surprise endings of his well-made plots. Talented as an ironist, he
both comments upon and sympathizes with the ranch hands, bank clerks, and shop girls whose
sorrows and foibles he re-creates. While much of his humor redounds from his likely use of puns
and literary allusions, much might be called the humor of recognitionthe rueful grin that
occurs when a reader sees his or her own petty flaws mirrored in a character and predicts the
inevitable downfall. The downfall, however, is often given the comic turn which made O. Henry
famous. Kid Brady in Vanity and Some Sables, for example, would rather go to jail for the
theft of furs than tell his girlfriend that her Russian sables cost $21.50 in a bargain basement;
Maida, the shop girl in The Purple Dress who starves eight months to bring a purple dress and
a holiday together, gives up her carefully garnered money to save a spendthrift friend from
eviction. Molly sacrifices her fursand her vanityto prove Kids honesty, and Maida is
outdone by her tailor in generosity so that she gets both her dress and the marriageable head
clerk: These are the twist endings that turn minor personal tragedies into comic triumphs.
The Gift of the Magi
Possibly one of the most anthologized of O. Henrys stories is The Gift of the Magi, a tale
about the redeeming power of love. The protagonists, a couple named James and Della Young,
struggle to live on a small salary. By Christmas Eve, Dellas thrift has gained her only $1.87 for
her husbands gift, which she had hoped would be something fine and rare and sterling. She
decides to sell one of the family treasuresher long, beautiful chestnut hairto buy a
platinum chain for her husbands prized possession, his watch. The first reversal is that he has
bought her a set of pure tortoiseshell combs with which to adorn her long hair; the second, that
he has sold his watch to do so.
In this story about the true spirit of gift-giving, both the family treasures and the protagonists
take on Old Testamentary significance. Dellas hair, the reader is told, puts the Queen of Shebas
wealth to shame; Jims watch rivals all of Solomons gold. Both unselfishly sacrifice their most
precious possession for the other, thereby ushering in a new dispensation on Christmas Eve.
Even more, these two foolish children acquire allegorical value in their act of giving insofar as
they replicate the giving of the three wise men: Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they
are the wisest, O. Henry tells us: They are the magi. In O. Henrys version, then, the Gift of
the Magi turns out not to be gold, frankincense, or myrrh, not even hair-combs or a watch chain,
but rather selfless love.
Past One at Rooneys

This love is what O. Henry posits as a cure for such social ills as the inevitable gang fights and
prostitution he portrays in his New York stories. In Past One at Rooneys, a tale introduced as a
modern retelling of William ShakespearesRomeo and Juliet (c. 1595-1596), a gangster, hiding
from the police, falls in love with a prostitute. They lie about their occupations for the sake of the
other: Eddie MacManus pretends to be the son of a Wall Street broker, while Fanny claims to be
a factory girl. When a policeman recognizes MacManus, however, she gives up her new identity
to prevent the arrest. Pulling her nights money out of her garter, she throws it at the policeman
and announces that MacManus is her procurer. Once they are allowed to leave, MacManus
confesses that he really is wanted by the police but intends to reform; and seeing that she still
loves him, saves her (as she had saved him by sacrificing her hoped-for respectability) through
marriage. Such stories of the golden-hearted prostitute are plentiful in the O. Henry canon and
in themselves provide another clue to O. Henrys popularityhis emphasis on the remnant of
human compassion in the most cynical of characters.
Roads of Destiny
O. Henry is interested as well in what might be called the moment of choice: the decision to act,
speak, or dress in a way which seems to determine the whole course of a life. The title story of
the volume Roads of Destiny, a story allegorical in nature, suggests that the choice is not so
much among different fates as among different versions of the same fate. Environment, in short,
determines character, unless some modicum of self-sacrificing love as in The Gift of the Magi
intervenes. More concretely, O. Henry saw poverty and exploitation as the twin evils of urban
life. Often cited for his sympathetic portrayal of the underpaid store clerk who struggles to
survive, he is, as well, a biting critic of those who perpetuate an inhumane system to satisfy
personal greed or lust. An Unfinished Story, for example, castigates an aging lady-killer who is
a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how long it had
been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. Piggy, with
whom O. Henry himself ruefully identified, preyed on shop girls by offering them invitations to
dinner. The working girl might thus keep her conscience and starve, or sell herself and eat: This
was her condition as well as her choice.
The Trimmed Lamp
Where a choice need not be made through hunger alone is the middle moral ground on which
many of O. Henrys stories take place. The Trimmed Lamp, the titular story of another volume,
suggests two opposing ways to deal with an exploitative economic system. Nancy, a country girl
content to work for small wages in a department store, mimics not only the quietly elegant dress
but also the manners of her wealthy customers, while her friend Lou, a highly paid laundry
presser, spends most of her money on expensive, conspicuous clothing. Nancy exploits the
system by educating herself in the best it has to offer; Lou works for the system and profits
monetarily. In the long run Nancys education teaches her the difference between purchased
quality, such as the clothes Lou wears, and intrinsic quality, which cannot be bought. She refuses
an offer of marriage from a millionaire because he is a liar: As O. Henry writes, the dollar-mark
grew blurred in her minds eye, and shaped itself into such words as truth and honor and now
and then just kindness. Lou, in contrast, becomes the mistress of a wealthy man, leaving her
quiet, serious fiance to Nancy. The final vignette, a plainly clothed but vibrantly happy Nancy
trying to comfort her sobbing, fashionably dressed friend, illustrates the divergence between their
two philosophies. While neither can escape completely from the economic system, Nancy
refuses to measure human worth in monetary terms; instead, she adopts the same set of values
posited in The Gift of the Magi.
The Ransom of Red Chief

Many of the stories O. Henry writes are quite outside the moral framework that is suggested in
The Trimmed Lamp. Like others written about the gentle grafters which populated the
nether side of his world, the story of The Ransom of Red Chief is of the biter bit variety. O.
Henrys humorous focus on the problems that two kidnappers have with their chargea
redhaired version of Tom Sawyer with the same unflagging energy for mischiefdeflects the
moral question about the criminal action. Johnny enjoys his adventure; he styles himself Red
Chief and tries to scalp one of his captors at daybreak, then rides him to the stockade to rescue
settlers, feeds him oats, and worries him with questions about why holes are empty. His fathers
reply to a demand for ransom shows that he understands who is in captivity; he offers to take his
son back for a sum of $250.
The Gentle Grafter
Similarly, the exploits recounted in The Gentle Grafter are modern tall tales, the heroes at times
acquiring a mythological aura, at times appearing to be no different from the average man on the
street. Grafting, in short, is an occupation which carries the same code of responsibilities as any
legitimate business, as is made clear in Shearing the Wolf. When two con men, Jeff Peters and
Andy Tucker, discover that the leading hardware merchant in town intends to frustrate someone
elses scheme to sell forged money, they agree that they cannot stand still and see a man who
has built up a business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous
trickster. The twist is that the trickster is the merchant and the businessman is the forger.
In a number of respects, then, O. Henry contributed immeasurably to the development of the
American short story. To be sure, many of his works are considered ephemeral today, primarily
because they first appeared as magazine fiction; but a careful perusal reveals that behind the
humor lies the mirror of the social reformer. In the characters and situations one notices common
human problems of the beginning of the twentieth century; in the humor one notices the attempt
to deal with apparently insurmountable social problems. With his clever plot reversals, O. Henry
does more than create a new story form; he keeps the reader alive to the connotations of
language and aware that in a world dominated by an unfair economic system, human kindness
may be the answer.