The main content of Maggie's Gift is that the hero Jim is a small clerk whose salary is only enough to make ends meet, and the heroine Della is a virtuous and kind housewife. Their lives are poor, but Jim and Della both have a very precious treasure.
Jim has a gold watch and Della has beautiful waterfall hair. In order to give gifts to each other at Christmas, Jim sold his gold watch and bought a set of pure tortoise shells with jewels on the edge for Della. Della sold her long hair and bought Jim a platinum watch chain. They all gave up their most precious things for each other, and the gifts they got became useless.
The central idea of The Gift of the Maggie is the pure love between the two protagonists, which represents the sadness and joy of the lower class in the United States, and also contains the most important aspect of the "beauty of human nature" that the author wants to express: "selfless love".
In The Gift of the Magi, O Henry takes the beautiful love in the poor life of the broad masses of the lower classes as the theme. He made a sharp and bitter satire on the capitalist society where money was paramount at that time, and praised the broad masses of people for their spirit of caring for each other and self-sacrifice in the struggle and their beautiful love of seeing the truth in adversity. Its infinite artistic charm lies in the fact that the author shows the character characteristics in the plot and pays attention to the actions of the characters in the story, thus revealing the heroic character characteristics of the protagonist and their simple love.
O Henry (1862 September11-1910 June 5th), translated as William Sydney porter, is an American short story writer and the founder of modern American short stories.
1862, 1 1 In September, O 'Henry was born in Green Sboro, North Carolina, USA, and worked as a bank clerk and pharmacist. 1In February, 896, O 'Henry was imprisoned on charges of misappropriating public funds and then fled to Honduras. 1898 went to prison again, during which he began to publish his works. From 65438 to 0902, O 'Henry moved to new york and became a professional writer. 19 10 On June 5th, O Henry died of liver cirrhosis in new york, USA. O Henry, Chekhov and Mo Bosang are also called the world's three great short story masters. He was once praised by critics as the Laureate Prose Writer in Manhattan and the father of modern American short stories. His works are known as "Encyclopedia of American Life".