Abstract
As one of the greatest short-story novelists in the world, O. Henry is a critical realistic author, also one of the world’s three major short masters, together with Chekov and Maupassant. His writing style is appreciated by numerous readers, especially for the twist plot and the surprising ending with the feature of “smile with tears”. In language, O. Henry uses many rhetoric tactics to achieve the effect of making the stories more vivid and humorous, such as exaggeration, metaphor, and simile and so on. His writing materials are from his own life experiences, that each story is a reflection of the society then, and he always sympathizes with the poor, criticizes and satirizes the capitalists even the common insignificants who have the valuable humanity. Through the analysis of O. Henry’s representative novels, it has expounded the humanistic spirit and optimistic expectation of human kindness contained in his works, which also shows love and kindness are the ultimate belief and the eternal chapter praised by all human beings. Therefore, it has become a major stylistic feature of O. Henry’s novels to show the characters’ psychology by depicting the emotional motivation, which is also the main line and key to our analysis of his works. Moreover, his unique writing styles influence following authors in the field of literature, therefore, his story is known as the “encyclopedia of American life”.
Highlights
Henry is one of the most popular and widely known American short-story writers in the twentieth century, whose works are full of humorous literary language and unique writing styles
Henry’s writing skills mainly consist of two aspects, which is consisted in structural characteristics and linguistic features
Henry’s short stories is the typical form of literary, the accumulation of facts, but need the skillful handle of writer, including the processing of language skills, imaginative plots and so on. These artistic elements and reality are blending. He writes about the life of ordinary people in New York City, his works have a twist plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance
Summary
O. Henry is one of the most popular and widely known American short-story writers in the twentieth century, whose works are full of humorous literary language and unique writing styles. Henry’s short stories, which contains a deep humanitarian spirit His long life at the bottom of society, deeply understand the hardships of life of the lower classes, and feel how ruthless the laws made by the ruling class to the poor. O. Henry brings a new breath to the American short stories, and his works become famous for a long time and have world influence. Henry started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret His first work, Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking (1899), appeared in McClure’s Magazine. He published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime, for his last year, he was shadowed by alcoholism, ill healthy and financial problems, he died of cirrhosis of the liver in New York
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