爱无需大声说出来《欧·亨利短篇小说之麦琪的礼物》有感

时间：2024.4.27

爱无需大声说出来

——读《欧·亨利短篇小说之麦琪的礼物》有感

读完《麦琪的礼物》，我心中顿时浮出一些疑惑。

现在初中生间每天一句“我爱你”是真爱？还是能为自己爱的人付出是真爱？

这个故事说荒诞也不荒诞，说寻常还真不寻常。圣诞节的前一天，住在公寓里的贫穷的德拉想给丈夫吉姆一个惊喜，可是她只有一元八角七，她知道这点钱根本不够买什么好的礼物，于是她把引以自豪的褐色瀑布似的秀发剪下来，卖了，换来了20美元。找遍了各家商店，德拉花去21美元，终于买到一条朴素的白金表链，这可以配上吉姆的那块金表。而吉姆也想给妻子一个惊喜，他同样卖掉了引以自豪的金表，买了德拉羡慕渴望已久的全套漂亮的梳子作圣诞礼物。

在很多人看来，他们的做法都非常的不明智，为了一份圣诞礼物，牺牲掉自己最珍贵的东西。但我的内心却因此激起了一阵暖流，他们深爱着彼此。我真真切切地感受到了两个主人公之间的那种最纯真、最无私的爱。他们虽然最后失去了自己最贵重的东西，收到的礼物也都暂时派不上用场，但是，他们却收获了最最宝贵的礼物———彼此的真情。真正的爱情，不在乎口头上的爱你，行为上的想念。初中生间那些甜言蜜语，终敌不过时间的流逝与社会的诱惑。

吉姆和德拉，是生活在社会底层的小人物，却拥有着对生活的热情和对对方的深爱，在这些温暖的感情面前，贫困可以变得微不足道。在圣诞节前夕，两个人还想着要为对方买一件礼物互赠，多么浪漫多么温馨。即使这一份礼物似乎失去了使用的价值，它们却成了世间最珍贵的礼物，变成一份真挚的爱赠给了对方．他们用自己美丽的心灵赠给对方的是一件无价之宝。

爱不需要大声说出来，爱，还要会爱，懂爱。

第二篇：论欧·亨利短篇小说的叙事策略

广西师范大学

硕士学位论文

论欧·亨利短篇小说的叙事策略

姓名：赵素花

申请学位级别：硕士专业：英语语言文学指导教师：张叔宁

20080401

论欧?亨利短篇小说的叙事策略

研究生：赵素花年级：2005级学科专业：英语语言文学指导老师：张叔宁研究方向：英美文学中文摘要

欧?亨利（1862―1910），原名威廉?西德尼?波特，是世界三大短篇小说家及美国现当代短篇小说创始人之一。作为一名短篇小说大师，欧?亨利在他去世后十年引起批评界广泛的关注。无论在国内还是国外，批评家们主要关注的都是他作品中人性的主题，生动的情节，频繁的巧合，出人意料的结尾以及幽默的语言等方面。

对于欧?亨利独特的叙事策略，至今没有得到批评界应有的关注。鉴于此种现状，本文试图运用相关的现代叙事学理论来分析欧?亨利的数篇经典短篇小说，目的在于发现其精妙的叙事技巧，展现其独特的叙事策略，为欧?亨利的作品提供一个崭新的研究视角。本文开篇先简要介绍欧?亨利的生平，文学成就及其研究现状。然后，通过运用相关的现代叙事学理论，主要从以下三方面分析欧?亨利的数篇小说：多变的叙事角度（聚焦模式）及相应的话语形式；游动的叙事空间和协调一致的叙事时间。

通过对欧?亨利的三篇短篇小说的分析，笔者发现对于不同的作品，欧?亨利采取了不同的叙事视角及相应的话语形式，从不同的角度为读者展现了他所生活时代的生活画面。并且，每种叙事视角在揭示小说主题及塑造人物性格等方面都起着不可替代的重要作用。

结合自己的生活经历，欧?亨利主要把纽约、西部的得克萨斯和拉丁美洲的洪都拉斯作为其作品的三大叙事空间。这里的叙事空间所指的不仅是地理意义上的空间概念，而是一个集政治、经济、风俗习惯等为一体的文化空间。对不同叙事空间的人物他倾注了不同的情感：对纽约寄予的是同情；对西部展示的是欣赏；对拉丁美洲表现的则是谅解。在叙事时间方面，本文研读了欧?亨利的三个典型的短篇—《带家具的出租屋》（1906）、《麦琪的礼物》（1906）和《爱的牺牲》（1906）。通过使物理时间服务于心理时间以及撷取生活片段，欧?亨利使物理时间与心理时间得到有机统一，道出生活真谛；通过加速叙事和减速叙事，他使叙事速度得到合理调节；通过不同的叙事频率和种种悬念的运用，他使叙事动力得到强化。

在总结全文的基础上本文客观地评价了欧?亨利及其作品中叙事策略的重要性，指出欧?亨利短篇小说中独特的叙事策略为鉴赏及研究其作品提供了另一个重要的角度。本文的研究便证实了这一点。

关键词：欧?亨利；叙事视角；叙事话语；叙事空间；叙事时间

On Narrative Strategies in O. Henry’s Short Stories

Postgraduate: Zhao Suhua Grade: 2005 Major Field of Study: English Language & Literature Supervisor: Professor Zhang Shuning Orientation: British & American Literature

Abstract in English

O. Henry (1862—1910), whose original name is William Sydney Porter, is one of the three greatest short story masters in the world and the founders of American modern short story. As a master of short stories, O. Henry aroused great interest from critics ten years after his death. Both at home and abroad, critics comment on O. Henry and his works mainly with respect to the themes of humanity, vivid plots, frequent coincidences, surprising ending, and humorous language and so on.

Yet, O. Henry’s distinctive narrative strategies have not drawn so much attention from critics as they are deserved up to the date. In view of these conditions, the present thesis is an attempt to analyze O. Henry’s classical short stories by using relevant modern narrative theories so as to find out its skillful narrative techniques and reveal its distinctive narrative strategies. In a word, it aims at presenting a new perspective for research on O. Henry’s works.

This thesis begins with a general review of O. Henry’s life, literature achievements and previous studies of his works. Then by applying relevant theories on modern narratology, it focuses on analyzing the narrative strategies in O. Henry’s short stories from mainly three aspects: various narrative points of view (modes of focalization) and relevant narrative discourses; moving narrative spaces; coordinate narrative time.

Taking O. Henry’s three short stories as examples, the author finds that by employing different focalizations and relevant narrative discourses to different stories, O. Henry provides the readers with a whole picture of the life of his time. Furthermore, each mode of focalization has its significance in achieving the thematic importance for the story.

Deriving from his living experience, O. Henry mainly has New York, Texas in the West and Honduras in Latin America as the three narrative spaces of his works. The narrative space in his works refers not only to a geographical space, but also a cultural space of politics, economy, and traditional customs. He devotes different emotions to people in different spaces, he shows sympathy to New York; appreciation to the West; and forgiveness to Latin America.

As for narrative time, this thesis investigates O. Henry’s three typical short stories—The Furnished Room（1906），The Gift of the Magi （1906）and A Service of Love（1906）. Through making physical time serve psychological time and selecting episodes of life, O. Henry v

organically unites physical time with psychological time and reveals the true meaning of life; through acceleration and deceleration, he adjusts the narrative speed properly; and by employing different frequencies and suspense, he achieves tense narrative impetus.

The part of conclusion makes an objective assessment on the significance of O. Henry and the narrative strategies in his works on the basis of the analysis in this thesis. The unique narrative strategies in O. Henry’s short stories provides another important angle for reading and researching into his works, which has been proved to be worthwhile and rewarding in this thesis.

Key Words: O. Henry; narrative point of view; narrative discourse; narrative space;

narrative time

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all the people who have given me great support and help in pursuing this three-year research and writing this thesis.

First of all, I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Professor Zhang Shuning. Were it not for his effective guidance and careful revision throughout the writing, the thesis would not have turned out as it is. In the past three years, he gave me patient instructions and help in my study. His rigorous attitude toward academic research as well as his kindness and generosity sets a good example for my future study and work.

I also would like to express my appreciation to the professors who helped me with my study here during the three years and gave me valuable suggestions to my thesis. They are Liu Yuhong, Lu Xiaohong, Wang Meiping, Yan Xingzhi and other professors.

Thirdly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my parents, elder brother and sisters who have played an important role in the past years in my life and study.

Besides, I greatly appreciate my boyfriend Yang Xiaojun who searches for valuable materials for my thesis and supports me in spirit and life during these three years.

I will not forget my fellow students who once gave me their friendly help and suggestions in the three years. Thanks for their help.

iii

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 O. Henry’s Life and Literature Achievements

O. Henry (1862—1910), whose original name is William Sydney Porter, is one of the three most famous short story writers in the world and the founders of American modern short story. In order to carry forward the fine tradition of O. Henry’s works, the O. Henry Memorial Award has been presented since 1918 for the best short stories published every year. Like his works, O. Henry is a legendary person whose life is filled with twists and turns. On Sep.11th, 1962, he was born in a small town named Greensboso, North Carolina, the United States. His father was a doctor, and his mother gifted with literature died when he was only three years old. Then O. Henry moved to his grandma’s with his father and spent his childhood in Aunt Lina’s private school. There he learnt writing, drawing and read lots of famous Greek, Roman and

However, due to economic reasons, O. Henry had to work as an apprentice in his uncle’s drugstore when he was only 15 years old. In the drugstore, he met people of various kinds, showed his talent in caricature and humor, and collected valuable writing materials for his later writing career. Such famous works as Let Me Feel Your Pulse（1911）, The Enchanted KissEnglish works. Thus, his interest in literature was cultivated for the first time. （1909） and The Marionettes（1920）all benefited from his apprentice experience.

Two years later, to improve his delicate health condition, with the help of his father’s friend, O. Henry went to Texas State in the west. There, he worked in a ranch as a cowboy for two years. During those two years, he experienced not only all kinds of humanity and social contradictions in West Development but also a wide, clear and genuine life style differing greatly from the East. He described this in such story as Hygeia at the Solito（1904）.

In 1884, O. Henry moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked in the general land office. In 1887, he married Athol Estes and spent a short but happy marriage life of four years. Then in 1891, he began to work as a clerk in First National Bank of Austin. In 1894 he embarked on a literary venture and transformed it into a humorous publication— The Rolling Stone（1894）. Although it turned to be a financial failure, The Rolling Stone set a good foundation for his later writing career. Unfortunately, in the same year he was accused of embezzlement by First National Bank of Austin. In 1896, he abandoned his wife and daughter and fled to Honduras in Latin America.

In July of 1897, he was imprisoned when coming home to visit his dying wife. He was sentenced to a five-year imprisonment in 1898. Because of his excellent manifestation, he was released ahead of time in 1901. In the prison, he published his 1st short story—Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking（1899） with the pseudonym O. Henry.

Getting out of prison in 1901, O. Henry settled down in New York and took writing as his career. During his short life, O. Henry wrote about 300 short stories and a novel. His literary achievements lie mainly in his short stories which can be divided into the following groups according to their themes.

The first group stories are those describing the underclass common people. In the preface of his most famous short-story collection The Four Million (1906), he writes,

Not very long ago someone invented the assertion that there were only “Four

Hundred” people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen—the census taker—and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the “Four Million.”(O. Henry, 1906)

He declares that the main objects he writes in his stories are people who are poor. They fight against hardships and death, they own lofty soul and moving behaviors, and they have genuine love and friendship. Such short stories are The Gift of the Magi（1906）, A Service of Love（1906）, The Cop and The Anthem（1906） and so on.

The second group stories are those describing people on the broad west prairie. O. Henry has special emotion with the West. In his opinion, the West with its fresh air and harmonious human relationships is more suitable for people to live. Hygeia at the Solito is a typical example of this kind.

The last group stories are those describing robbers and cheats. In O. Henry’s short stories, most robbers are friendly and cheats are kind. Such stories are mainly included in the collections of The Gentle Grafter (1908) and Roads of Destiny (1909).

1.2 Previous Studies of O. Henry’s Works

Regarded as a master of short stories, O. Henry arouses great interest from critics ten years after his death. The famous critic Stephen, Leacock says in the preface of O. Henry’s The Voice of the City (1908) that “The time is coming, let’s hope, when the whole English-speaking world will recognize in O. Henry one of the greatest masters of modern fiction”(O. Henry,1908: Preface). He believes that O. Henry owns the technique of Maupassant, but exceeds Maupassant in humor. Either at home or abroad, critics comment on O. Henry and his works mainly with respect to the themes of humanity, vivid plots, frequent coincidences, surprising ending and humorous language.

Henry James Forman concerns mainly on the humanity themes of O. Henry’s works: “Gifted as he is with a flashing wit, abundant humor, and quick observation, no subject has terrors for him. If it be too much to say, in the old phrase, that nothing human is alien to him, at least the larger part of humanity is his domain” (Current-Garcia, 1993:158-159).

Stephen Leacock pays more attention to the design of plots, coincidences, suspense and surprising ending. In “The Amazing Genius of O. Henry” (1916), he puts forward his opinion,

Still harder is it to try to show the amazing genius of O. Henry as a “plot maker”,

as a designer of incident. No one better than he can hold the reader in suspense. More than that, the reader scarcely knows that he is “suspended”, until at the very close of the story. O. Henry, so to speak, turns on the lights and the whole tale is revealed as an entirety. (Leacock, 1916:249)

St. John Adcock has more interest in O. Henry’s language. He presents his opinion in “O. Henry: An English View” (1917):

He has none of the conscious stylist’s elaborate little tricks with words, for he is a

master of language and not its slave……He seems to go as he pleases, writing apparently just whatever words happen to be in the ink, yet all the while he is getting hold of his reader’s interest; subtly shaping his narrative with a story-teller’s unerring instinct, generally allowing you no glimpse of its culminating point until you are right on it.(Adcock, 1917:202-203)

In China, the only monographic book on O. Henry is Ruan Wenling’s Going in a Maze—the Artistic World in O. Henry (1997). It focuses on three research aspects of the writer, the works and the art. Professor Ruan introduces O. Henry’s life thoroughly, comments most of O. Henry’s works creatively, and makes it a valuable book for research into O. Henry and his works. Moreover, there are several master theses and around one hundred articles published in periodicals. Similarly, most of these theses and articles limit their discussions to the humanity themes, flexible plot arrangements and humorous language, which make up what is called “O. Henry’s Technique”. However, what will be presented in the present thesis are the narrative strategies in O. Henry’s short stories, which have ever been discussed scarcely.

1.3 A Brief Introduction to Narratology

American narratologist Gerald Prince defines narratology in his A Dictionary of Narratology (1987) as “Narratology is the theory of narrative. It studies the nature, form, and functioning of narrative and tries to characterize narrative competence”(Prince, 1987: 65). Although the term of “narratology” hasn’t been proposed by T. Todorov until 1969, the research on narrative structure has such a long history that Aristotle’s “Poetics” is regarded as its original in the west. However, narrative techniques in fiction have not been highly valued until Gustave Flaubert (1820—1880) and Henry James (1843—1916) first turn their attention to them. Contrary to the traditional literary criticism which focuses on the works’ moral significances, narratology concentrates on analyzing the structures and the formal techniques of narration. Since the sixties of the 20th century, narratology has been one of the central topics of literary concerns. The study of this subject develops quickly in the following years and has become a trend in international literary studies.

Among the narratologists, Gernard Genette is probably the most eminent representative. His Narrative Discourse (1980) provides a series of essential theories on narrative such as focalization, story, discourse, narrative time, and narrative space and so on. Gerald Prince is also an influential narratologist who systematically generalizes concepts on narratology in his A Dictionary of Narratology (1987). Another narratologist Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan analyzes and generalizes the key elements of the fictional narrative, including focalization, event-time, story-time, etc.

As a master of short story, O. Henry presents distinctive narrative strategies in his works. This can be seen from the narrative point of view (focalization), narrative discourse, narrative space and narrative time in his short stories. Although there are a few papers analyzing his narrative techniques, such as mixed forms, and shifts in narrative point of view, however, they are sporadic and unsystematic. In view of these conditions, this thesis will propose a comprehensive research on his narrative strategies by employing relevant modern theories of narratology. Based on concepts and definitions of Genette’s Narrative Discourse (1980), Prince’s A Dictionary of Narratology (1987), and Rimmon-Kenan’s Fictional Narrative (1983), applying theories on narratology at home and abroad as reference, this thesis analyzes the narrative strategies in O. Henry’s short stories from the following three aspects: narrative point of view (focalization) and relevant narrative discourse, narrative space and narrative time. In addition to revealing the narrative profoundness, the present thesis aims at presenting a new perspective for research on O. Henry’s works.

This thesis is made up of five chapters:

Chapter 1 consists of a general review of O. Henry’s life and literary achievements, previous studies of O. Henry’s works and a brief introduction to the modern theories on narratology, which set a theoretical foundation for the following study.

Chapter 2 carries out a detailed narratological analysis of the modes of focalization and relevant narrative discourses employed in O. Henry’s three short stories. It ends with the important role focalization and narrative discourse play in moulding lifelike story pictures and strengthening the thematic significance of humanity.

Chapter 3 mainly concentrates on the moving narrative space in O. Henry’s several short storieswith New York, Texas and Honduras in Latin America as their narrative spaces. O. Henry devotes such different emotions to people in different spaces as sympathy to New York, appreciation to the West and forgiveness to Latin America.

Chapter 4 concerns on the coordinate narrative time in O. Henry’s three short stories by applying relevant theories on narrative time. It is found that O. Henry organically unites physical time with psychological time and reveals the true meaning of life; adjusts the narrative speed properly; and achieves tense narrative impetus.

Chapter 5 is the conclusion part. This part generalizes the significance of O. Henry and the narrative strategies in his works on the basis of the analysis in this thesis. Moreover, the purpose of providing another important angle for reading and researching into O. Henry’s works is presented.

Chapter 2 Various Narrative Points of View and Relevant Narrative

Discourses in O. Henry’s Short Stories

2.1 Classification of Point of View

The narrative point of view, the vantage point that writers choose when they write a story, is a word used frequently in the theory of narratology. It refers to the angle the narrator takes when telling a story. In other words, it is through somebody’s view that the narrator observes the story. To achieve different effects, writers often employ different points of view in their works.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, during the traditional critical period the works’ moral values are focused on, while structures and formal techniques are neglected. As a result, various fictions are divided into two categories according to the narrative personal pronoun: first-person narration and third-person narration, which remains as the sole criterion to distinguish all kinds of narrative modes before the 20th century. However, the inadequacy of this classification becomes more and more obvious with the development of narratology. The famous fiction critic Booth remarks in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1893) that “Perhaps the most overworked distinction is that of person. To say that a story is told in the first or the third person will tell us nothing of importance unless we become more precise and describe how the particular qualities of the narrators relate to specific effects”(Booth, 1983:150).

That is to say, when analyzing a particular work, what we concentrate on should be the narrative techniques a narrator uses, but not the personal pronoun he employs. Since Henry James turns his attention to narrative techniques in fiction, more and more narrative theorists attempt to classify point of view. Here, the thesis introduces three influential ones, Uspensky’s, Friedman’s and Genette’s.

Uspensky is the first critic to propose four kinds of points of view: ideological, phraseological, spatial and temporal, and psychological. Chatman puts forward three aspects of points of view: perceptual, conceptual and interest.

In Point of View in Fiction (1967), Friedman offers eight different points of view, which may be the most detailed one.

1) editorial omniscience, which gives the narrator complete liberty to comment in his voice without being a character in the story;

2) neutral omniscience, which allows the narrator to express his attitude in a subtle and indirect manner;

3) first-person narrator as witness;

4) first-person narrator as protagonist;

5) multiple selective omniscience, or narration through the shifting perspectives

of various characters;

6) selective omniscience, which is limited to the perspective of one particular

character;

7) the dramatic mode, which only recounts what can be observed externally;

8) the camera mode, in which no evidence of human interference appears to be

present. (Friedman, 1967:118-131)

Obviously, all these attempts to define the concept of point of view seem somewhat confused. “They demonstrate the many facets of its breath on the one hand, and the difficulty in reaching a unanimous description on the other” (Dai Fan, 2005:31).

However, the principal reason leading to their failure to classifying point of view lies in that they fail to distinguish narrative view from narrative voice. It is Genette who first notices the differences between narrative view and narrative voice. In Narrative Discourse, Genette points out that the point of view includes two sides in its meaning—narrative view and narrative voice, which are in fact the question of “who sees” and “who speaks”(Genette,1980:186). Narrative voice should be the narrator’s voice but narrative view can be either the narrator’s or the character’s. The narrator can give up his own view and adopt the character’s view. In this case, narrative view and narrative voice belong to different persons.

To avoid ambiguity between narrative view and narrative voice, Genette applies the word focalization to replace the traditional narrative point of view. In Narrative Discourse, he provides three categories of focalizations.

1) Zero focalization: the narrative with omniscient narrator, where the narrator

says more than any of the characters knows, ie: narrator>character

2) Internal focalization: the narrative with restricted field or restricted

omniscience, only fully realized in narratives of interior monologue. Internal focalization may be fixed, or variable, ie: narrator=character

3) External focalization: the narrative where the narrator says less than a character

knows, ie: narrator<character (ibid. :188-192)

In fact, narrative theorists before Genette have realized that their classifications are not always precise, but they can hardly make it precise. Comparatively, Genette’s classification is more precise and comprehensive, thus this chapter will take it as the theoretical foundation. 7

Moreover, to comprehend the concept of focalization thoroughly, another two concepts should be introduced—focalizor and the focalized object. According to Prince, “focalizor is the subject of focalization, the holder of point of view, the focal point governing the focalization” (Prince, 1987: 32). The focalized subject should be the object of the focalizor.

2.2 Classification of Narrative Discourse

Narrative discourse has been arousing the interest of narratologists in that it is an essential factor in altering mode of focalization and regulating narrative distance. Along with the development of narratology, narrative theorists classify all kinds of narrative discourses of the characters. However, the five kinds presented by G. Leech and M. Short’s as speech presentation are the most influential and have been frequently adopted to analyze works. Here, the speech presentation is renamed as narrative discourse to coordinate with the other narrative items used in this thesis. They are direct discourse (DD), indirect discourse (IDD), free direct discourse (FDD), free indirect discourse (FID), and narrative report discourse (NRD).(Leech, 2001:318－350) For every kind of narrative discourse, the authors provide one or several examples, and some examples which are basically the same in meaning of each kind are taken here:

(1) He said, “I’ll come back here to see you again tomorrow.” (DD) (ibid. :319)

(2) He said that he would return there to see her the following day. (IDD) (ibid. :319)

(3) He said I’ll come back here to see you again tomorrow. / “I will come back here to see you again tomorrow.” / I will come back here to see you again tomorrow. (FDD) (ibid. :322)

(4) He would return there to see her again the following day. / He would return there to see her again tomorrow. / He would come back there to see her again tomorrow. (FID) (ibid. :325)

(5) He promised to return. / He promised to visit her again. (NRD) (ibid. :324)

To illustrate the differences between them, Leech and Short explain them one by one in the following pages.

Among the five forms of narrative discourses, direct discourse is often used to “quote the words used verbatim” to “report what someone has said” (ibid. :318). What the character says can be conveyed faithfully. Indirect discourse only takes the contents of the direct speech while using the narrator’s own words. As a result, “the person who is reporting the conversation intervenes as an interpreter between the person he is talking to and the words of the person he is reporting, instead of merely quoting verbatim the speech that occurred” (ibid. :320). When the quotation marks and the introductory reporting clause served as the two features of direct discourse are removed, free direct discourse is produced. Free direct discourse is more direct 8

than direct discourse for being without either or both of the introductory reporting clause and the quotation marks. Free indirect discourse is a more indirect form than indirect discourse, and it is “a mixed form somewhere between direct and indirect discourse” (ibid. :321). The narrative report discourse is often used to “report a speech act (or a number of speech acts)” (ibid.: 323), in which what the character says is only summarized by the narrator. So it is more indirect than indirect discourse.

2.3 Zero Focalization and FDD in The Marionettes

Genette renames the narrative with omniscient narrator as narrative with zero focalization. (Genette, 1980: 189) In a narrative with zero focalization, the omniscient narrator knows everything, just like the Judeo-Christian God. Standing above the world of the story, the godlike narrator can not only narrate everything in the story but also make comments on the characters and events from time to time.

O. Henry adopts zero focalization typically in The Marionettes. This is a short story about a burglar who acts as a doctor deep in the night and does something philanthropic out of conscience. In the story, the omniscient narrator is like a God watching “the marionettes” playing in the air, and he knows everything about the protagonists and makes commentary from time to time.

First of all, the narrator sets a gloomy setting for the protagonist to turn up—“at the 24th Street and a prodigiously dark alley”. Moreover, “the time is two o’clock in the morning; the outlook is a stretch of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.” The burglar can deceive three patrolmen with his “emotionless, smooth countenance”, “steady dark eyes”, “exquisite visiting card printed ‘Charles Spencer James, M.D.’” and even “a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings.” However, he cannot deceive the God-like narrator who can peep into “that immaculate medicine case” in which there is “an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the ‘box man’ (a name for the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself), a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half empty, and underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and thirty dollars” (O. Henry, 1920:66—67).

Maybe the readers will doubt about the author’s writing skill when they find that the narrator tells too many details—even the contents in the medicine case. However, this is just a point that reveals O. Henry’s narrative skills. It seems that the omniscient narrator is narrating everything he knows without choices. In fact, the narrator is setting a foreshadowing for the development of the story meticulously. All these three kinds of things in the medicine case—the latest conceived tools, the nitroglycerine and the money are essential for the protagonist to play like a marionette.

The next important omnisciently narrative scene turns up when James changes himself from a professional doctor to a burglar when hearing the patient’s feeble murmuring of “the money, the twenty thousand dollars”. The God-like narrator knows clearly what James is thinking and reveals it to the readers: “there arose in Doctor James’ brain and heart the instincts of his other profession—burglar”(ibid.:74). With no other people being present, James opens his medicine case, takes out the vial containing the nitroglycerine, dilutes only one drop of nitroglycerine with half a tumbler of water (now the liquid has become a solution of glonoine, the most powerful heart stimulant), and then easily and skillfully injects the contents of the syringe into the muscles of the region over the unconscious patient’s heart.

During this period, the omniscient narrator plays a special role which the narrator in internal and external focalization cannot. He can review what James has done two hours before—“he injected the undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a safe, and had destroyed, with one dull explosion, the machinery that controlled the movement of the bolts” (ibid.:75), he can predict what James will do—“he now purposed, with the same means, to shiver the prime machinery of a human being—to rend its heart—and each shock was for the sake of the money to follow” (ibid.:75), he can also make comments on James’ deeds and illustrate professional knowledge on medical science and chemistry,

The same means, but in a different guise…… Two ounces of nitroglycerine had

riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intricate mechanism of a human life. But not immediately. It was not so intended.” (ibid.:75)

Just as expected, the patient comes to himself in three minutes and tells “the doctor” where the money is. James opens the safe door in two minutes proficiently. However, to his great surprise—“the interior of the safe is bare—not even a scarp of paper rests within the hollow iron cube” (ibid.:75).

Both James and Chandler are marionettes played by each other. James is trapped into a position which is both ridiculous and awkward with Chandler’s caustic taunts about his combination of doctor and burglar. However, at the same time he is controlling the other marionette—“he maintains Chandler’s dignity as well as his presence of mind and takes out his watch to wait for the man to die” (ibid.:78).

To mend up zero focalization’s shortcoming of reducing suspense, O. Henry skillfully utilizes the last stage property in James’ medicine case—the money. Hearing a miserable 10

marriage story about a pure lady and a gambler, drunkard and spendthrift from the loyal servant, James leaves all his income that night to the pitiful mistress.

The narration with zero focalization is a traditional writing device which can provide necessary information at all time and in all places. In The Marionettes, the narrator explains every detail to the readers from the beginning to the end, which in principle may greatly reduce the vividness, truthfulness and suspense of the story. However, although the readers are made to accept everything passively from the narrator, through arranging the plots reasonably and depicting the special combination role of a doctor and burglar, O. Henry makes the story vivid, truthful and full of suspense.

Moreover, the thematic significance of humanity is emphasized. O. Henry lives and writes in a period when the United States develops quickly and steps into its imperialistic period. The terrible competition and greedy exploitation of the capitalist class result in the loss of senses and humanity in that society. However, when describing this, O. Henry also pays attention to the remains or returning of humanity. Therefore, in The Marionettes, he combines two different professions—doctor and burglar in one person. One is seeking for money by murder, and the other is helping people through medical treatment. This kind of contradictory phenomenon seems unbelievable to the readers, however, by applying zero focalization, O. Henry makes it more objective. Whether attacking the loss of humanity or praising the returning of humanity, what O. Henry concerns about is the humanistic theme. By applying zero focalization, he makes the theme more believable, more objective, and more profound.

The most representative narrative discourse in The Marionettes is free direct discourse. The typical examples are two conversations between the patient whose intelligence is failing and the doctor who is eager to know where the money is:

D: “I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am told. You

are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at all.”

P: “The money—the twenty thousand dollars.”

D: “Where is this money?—in the bank?”

P: The eyes expressed a negative. “Tell her”—the whisper was growing

fainter—“the twenty thousand dollars—her money”—his eyes wandered about the room.

D: “You have placed this money somewhere?”—“Is it in this room?” (ibid: 73)

“Unfortunately”, the patient is too weak to tell him anything about the money before he faints. The free direct discourse reveals the subconscious mental activity of Doctor James’. He 11

naturally changes his role into a burglar and injects the diluted nitroglycerine into the body of the patient to make him wake in three minutes.

Dramatically, the wakened patient realizes the doctor’s hatch sinister plot and teases him that—“where—should it be,” he gasped, “but in—the safe—there?” After James opens the empty safe, they begin another conversation recited in free direct discourse:

A thick dew has formed upon the dying man’s brow, but there is a mocking, grim smile on his lips and in his eyes.

P: “I never—saw it before”, he said, painfully, “medicine and—burglary wedded!

Do you—make the –combination pay—dear Doctor?”

……

P: “You were—just a shade—too—anxious—about that money. But it never

was—in any danger—from you, dear Doctor. It’s safe. Perfectly safe. It’s all—in the hands—of the bookmakers. Twenty—thousand—Amy’s money. I played it at the races—lost every—cent of it. I’ve been a pretty bad boy, Burglar—excuse me—Doctor, but I’ve been a square sport. I don’t think—I ever met—such an—eighteen-carat rascal as you are, Doctor—excuse me—Burglar, in all my rounds. Is it contrary—to the ethics—of your—gang, Burglar, to give a victim—excuse me—patient, a drink of water?” (ibid: 78-79)

Doctor James brings him a drink. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.

P: “Gambler—drunkard—spendthrift—I’ve been those, but—a doctor—burglar!”

(ibid.: 79)

The doctor points to the sleeping lady’s door with a gesture so stern and significant that the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his remaining strength, to see. He sees nothing; but he catches the cold words of the doctor—the last sounds he was to hear:

D: “I never yet—struck a woman.” (ibid.79)

With such free direct discourse, the characters seem to speak for themselves. As it minimizes the distance between the characters and the readers, and allows a most free display of the characters’ speech. Thus, the readers watch a splendid marionette play between “an assassin and a robber” and “a bully who owns all features of a gambler, a drunkard and a spendthrift.” They hate each other’s despicable deeds and flourish their own immaculate standard of conduct respectively.

2.4 External Focalization and DD in The Rathskeller and The Rose

Apart from complete zero focalization as applied in The Marionettes, O. Henry adopts external focalization in some of his famous short stories. According to Genette, “external focalization denotes a focalization that is limited to what the observer could actually have observed from the outside. In a narrative with external focalization, the hero performs in front of us without our ever being allowed to know his thoughts or feelings”(Genette, 1980: 190). It involves no accounts of the characters’ thoughts, feelings and emotions, unless these are revealed from external behaviors of the characters. The narrator seems to know nothing about the story, so that he has to stand far away from the characters and objectively records what the characters do and say.

In The Rathskeller and The Rose (1908), O. Henry skillfully applies external focalization. First of all, to set a background for the story, the omniscient narrator introduces the basic information of the protagonist to the readers—“Miss Posie Carrington had earned her success” (O. Henry, 1908: 183).

She changed her destiny as she has changed her family name “Boggs” into “Carrington”.

“She is in the hey-day of flattery, fame and fizz; and that astute manager, Herr

Timothy Goldstein, has her signature to iron-clad papers that she will star the coming season in Dyde Richs’ new play, ‘Paresis by Gaslight’”. (ibid.: 183)

However, the manager meets with great difficulty when choosing the chief male character “Haytosser” because Miss Carrington raised in a small town known as Cranberry Corners is rather strict with the choice of the chief male character, and won’t listen to any of his suggestions.

“She has her own artistic criterion—‘she has turned down half a dozen of the best

imitators of the rural dub in the city because they don’t know a turnip from a turnstile.’ She has her own artistic eyesight—‘when a Broadway orchid sticks a straw in his hair and tries to call himself a clover blossom she’s on, all right.’ She has her own artistic principle—‘she declares she won’t set a foot on the stage unless ‘Haytosser’ is the best that can be raked up’. Moreover, she has her own artistic pursuit—‘I want the real article’.” (Ruan Wenling, 1997：130)

Then the story’s main body is turned into external focalization. The external narrator objectively describes all that happens in a rathskeller like a camera.

There was a jolly small party at one of the tables that drew many eyes. Miss

Carrington, petite, marvellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken, shall be named first. Herr Goldstein follows……

At 11:45 a being entered the rathskeller....... Exquisitely and irreproachably rural

was the new entry. A lank, disconcerted, hesitating young man it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth, awkward, stricken to misery by the lights and company. His clothing was butternut, with bright blue tie, showing four inches of bony wrist and white-socked ankle. He upset a chair, sat in another one, curled a foot around a table leg, and cringed at the approach of a waiter. (O. Henry, 1908: 185-186)

The external narrator does not mention Miss Carrington’s inner responses to the rural young man, but invites his readers to participate in the creation of the plots. Deriving from the omniscient narration in the first part, the readers may naturally infer that Miss Carrington has found her ideal partner. The rural features in the young man are so exquisite and irreproachable that at his entry—

“The first violin perceptibly flattered a C that should have been natural, the

clarionet blew a bubble instead of a grace note, Miss Carrington giggled, and the youth with parted hair swallowed an olive seed.” (ibid.: 185—186)

The narrator continues to describe what he can see from the outside:

His gaze rested at length upon Miss Carrington. He rose and went to her table

with a lateral, shining smile and a blush of pleased trepidation.

“How’re ye, Miss Posie?” he said in accents not to be doubted. “Don’t ye

remember me—Bill Summers—the Summerses that lived back of the blacksmith shop? I reckon I’ve grown up some since ye left Cranberry Corners.” (ibid.: 186)

Till now, both the readers and Miss Posie get to know that the young man is named “Bill Summers”, and comes from Miss Posie’s hometown— Cranberry Corners. At that moment, Miss Posie maybe have paid attention to him, but she still keeps silent to him. Thus, Bill has to continue his performance:

“Liza Perry lowed I might see ye in the city while I was here. You know Liza

married Benny Stanfield, and she says—” (ibid.: 186)

Bill’s casual utterance finally leads to Miss Posie’s sentiment to her hometown. With great interest, she interrupts Bill brightly—

“Ah, say! Liza Penny is never married—what! Oh, the freckles of her!” (ibid.:

187)

Calmly and timely, Bill continues to introduce all kinds of fantastic news derived from Miss Posie’s hometown:

“Married in June…… Ham Riley perfessed religion; ……the youngest Waters

girl run away with a music teacher;……your uncle Wiley was elected constable;……Tom Beedle is courtin’ Sallie Lathrop……” (ibid.: 187)

Miss Posie becomes further interested in what Bill is saying and says:

“……come on over here and tell me some more.” She sweeps him to an isolated

table in a corner. (ibid.: 187)

What the external observer can see is that:

Posie Carrington laid her dimpled and desirable chin upon her hands, and forgot

her audience. (ibid.: 188)

From the moment when Bill appears in the rathskeller till now, the external narrator just shows his readers an objective picture of what the characters do and say. He does not tell the readers Miss Posie’s thoughts and feelings except that revealed from her external responses to Bill’s words. Therefore, the narration is filled with a sense of mystery and invites the readers’ participation and imagination—what decision will Miss Posie make? Is Bill really from Cranberry Corners? How will he end up with his performance? In the following parts, O. Henry continues to use external focalization and direct discourse to record the story from the outside:

“Miss Posie,” said Bill Summers, “I was up to your folkeres house just two or

three days ago……”

“How’s ma?” asked Miss Carrington.

“She was settin’ by the front door, crocheting a lamp-mat when I saw her last,”

said “Bill”. “She’s Older’n she was, Miss Posie. But everything in the house looked jest the same. Your ma asked me to set down. ‘Don’t touch that willow rocker, William,’ says she. ‘It ain’t been moved since Posie left; and that’s the apron she was hemmin’, layin’ over the arm of it, jist as she flung it. I’m in hopes,’ she goes on, ‘that Posie’ll finish runnin’ out that hem some day.’” (ibid.: 188-189)

Obviously, after exaggerating hometown affection, Bill begins to play his second trump—maternal love. Miss Posie is completely absorbed in Bill’s narration and peremptorily and briefly orders a drink to calm her excited mood.

“The sun was shinin’ in the door,” went on the chronicler from Cranberry, “and

your ma was settin’ right in it. I asked her if she hadn’t better move back a little. ‘William,’ says she, ‘when I get sot down and lookin’ down the road, I can’t bear to move. Never a day,’ says she, ‘but what I set here every minute that I can spare and watch over them palin’s for Posie. She went away down that road in the night, for we seen her little shoe tracks in the dust, and somethin’ tells me she’ll come back that way ag’in when she’s weary of the world and begins to think about her old mother.” (ibid.: 189)

In the part above, the external observer records the whole observation between Bill and Miss Posie. However, most of the contents are Posie’s mother’s words retold by Bill in direct discourse. Without any descriptions of mental states, what the characters say becomes the only entry into their mental activities. The readers can easily lineate a picture as in the mind of both Bill and Posie’s—an old lady sitting in the sun is looking down the road before her and is looking forward to her daughter’s return with great hope.

By employing direct discourse, the narrator objectively reports Miss Carrington’s mother’s original words. The application of direct discourse revealing much vividness enables the readers to find a typical tender mother who is affectionately waiting for her daughter to return home. This sets an essential foreshadowing for the coming of the climax.

At last, Bill takes from his coat pocket a yellow odorous rose taken from Posie’s home. The external observer doesn’t catch sight of any sentimental homesick responses from Miss Posie. On the contrary, she cries with glee—“ain’t those poky places the limit? I just know that two hours at Cranberry Corners would give me the horrors now” (ibid.: 190). And then she leaves the rathskeller in a glittering cab. The next moment, from the conversation between “Bill” and 16

Goldstein, the external observer gets to know that “Bill” is an actor named Highsmith beseeching engagement as “Sol Haytosser”—the comic and chief male character part in “Paresis by Gaslight”. Goldstein’s words recorded by the external narrator represents the readers inference to Miss Carrington’s attitude—“your make-up and acting was OK…….I don’t see how she can keep from being satisfied with your exhibition of ability” (ibid.: 190).

From the narration of the external observer, readers appreciate an excellent comic performance from Mr. Highsmith. Moreover, we see another “Sister Carrie” as in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Similar family background, similar characteristics and similar career achievements naturally lead to similar destiny. Miss Carrington probably also achieves her success as stardom on the stage at the cost of some precious character in humanity.

External focalization is applied to the end of the story. When the rural Bill turns out to be fashionable Highsmith the next morning, he only gets the following news from the actress’ French maid,

“It is with great regret. Mees Carrington have cancelled all engagements on the

stage, and have returned to live in that—how you call what town? Cranberry Cornaire!” (ibid.: 191)

This is the climax and the end of the story. The external narrator does not waste any ink to describe the reaction of Mr. Highsmith’s. However, the readers can feel and imagine the special feelings of his hearing the startling news—astonished, disappointed and even depressed or indignant. Moreover, we are relieved with Miss Carrington for the return of humanity to her—being sentimentally attached to hometown and maternal love, which is the theme of the story.

From all the analysis above, we can find that by using direct discourse and external focalization without any description to the characters’ inner world, the narrative with external focalization restricts itself so much that the superiority of the omniscient narrator is completely deprived of. However, largely limited to only what the characters do and say, the narrative with external focalization leaves enough blank spaces for the readers to fill up and creates suspense so that the readers are absorbed in the development of the plots. In terms of revealing the humanistic theme of the story, the specially featured external focalization plays an irreplaceable role.

2.5 Internal Focalization and DD in No Story

In addition to zero focalization and external focalization, O. Henry also adopts internal focalization to see or experience an event from one or more characters’ perspective. According to Genette, “internal focalization is fully realized only in the narrative of ‘interior monologue’”(Genette, 1980: 193). In other words, “internal focalization is a type of focalization whereby information is conveyed in terms of a character’s (conceptual or perceptual) point of view or perspective” (Prince, 1987:45). That is to say, when the focalizor coincides with one or more characters in an event, internal focalization appears. Internal focalization can be fixed (when one and only one perspective is adopted), variable (when different perspectives are adopted in turn to present different situations and events) or multiple (when the same situations and events are presented more than once, each time in terms of a different perspective)(ibid.: 45).

O. Henry applies these three kinds of internal focalization to his No Story (1953) appropriately. In this story, the narrator “I” —Chalmers is Tripp’s friend. One day, the poverty-stricken worker Tripp meets a young lady Ada who comes from the Long Island to New York to find her first boyfriend George. Tripp tries his best to excuse himself for asking Chalmers four or five dollars to help Ada to go home by providing Chalmers an excellent writing material. However, Tripp turns out to be George in the end and “I” cannot help giving Tripp his whisky dollar.

2.5.1 Fixed Internal Focalization

From the literal meaning mentioned above, we know that the narration with fixed internal focalization is one in which everything the readers learn comes from one fixed narrator. Moreover, “the focalizor is often a character in the novel” (Jeremy, 2000: 258). In No Story, the first focalizor is the first-person narrator—Chalmers, who at the same time is a character in the story. Tripp’s appearances in different plots in the story are all narrated from the perspective of Chalmers’. That is, the focalizor is fixed on Chalmers, or O. Henry adopts fixed internal focalization when describing Tripp.

In this story, Chalmers plays three roles: a focalizor, a character and a narrator. From time to time, focalizor Chalmers and narrator Chalmers are combined as one. By applying the first-person retrospective narrative, the story is basically narrated from the perspective of Chalmers’. When describing Tripp’s appearances, the focalizor Chalmers is attached to the narrator Chalmers. Moreover, participant Chalmers’ consciousness on Tripp is expressed sometimes.

Here, several sentences describing Tripp’s appearances are taken out to be analyzed:

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table……He was about twenty-five and

looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the “welcome” left off. He was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. (O. Henry,1953: 773)

The narrator Chalmers puts forward the general impression Tripp leaves on the focalizor Chalmers. Humorous as the words are, the readers can realize that the protagonist in this story is a poverty-stricken young man living at the bottom of the society. Because he often borrows money from others, the participant Chalmers looks up at him vigilantly and asks impatiently—“Well，Tripp，how goes it？” What the focalizor Chalmers finds is that:

He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and

downtrodden than I had ever seen him. (ibid.: 773)

The narrator Chalmers applies four phrases—“more miserable”, “more cringing”, “more haggard” and “downtrodden” to portray the present Tripp. Therefore, the readers naturally realize that maybe Tripp has got into some troubles.

Finally, Tripp plucks his courage and utters what Chalmers is reluctant to hear: “Have you got a dollar?” Realizing participant Chalmers’ impatience and refusal, he adds that—“I don’t want to borrow any, I thought you’d like to get put onto a good story……It’ll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don’t want anything out of it myself” (ibid.: 774).Then he takes long paragraphs to describe a writing material. Now Tripp’s appearance in focalizor Chalmers’ eyes is that:

The premature lines on Tripp’s face grew deeper. He frowned seriously from his

tangle of hair. (ibid.: 775)

In the end, Chalmers is persuaded to meet the young lady Ada and buy a ticket for her to go home out of responsibility, but not out of getting a writing material. When Ada leaves New York, “the spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwindling”, the appearance of Tripp’s reflects into the focalizor Chalmers’ eyes is,

He looked more careworn, contemptible, and disreputable than ever. (ibid.:779)

The reason that the participant and focalizor Chalmers gets such impression lies in that he holds that all those Tripp has done are out of the only purpose—getting one dollar from him to buy whisky. Thus, the participant Chalmers determines not to give Tripp that one dollar he desires despite his coaxing and cajoling, because “I had had enough of that wild-goose chase”.

Just at that time,

Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams to reach

for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel. (ibid.:780)

This half of silver dime is just Ada and her first lover George’s Love-promise token. Facing Chalmers’ startled and inquiring eye-sight, Tripp responds dully, “Oh yes, George Brown, alias Tripp. What’s the use?” (ibid.: 780)The participant Chalmers takes out Tripp’s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly lays it in his hand. At that moment, Tripp needs whisky to anesthetize his sensitive nerves and comfort his broken heart.

Seen from the analysis above, we find that all the appearances of Tripp’s are narrated from a fixed narrator—Chalmers. And at the same time, Chalmers is the focalizor and a character in the story, which intensifies the truthfulness of the description and has the readers understand the characters better.

2.5.2 Variable Internal Focalization

Compared with the narration with fixed internal focalization, “the narration with variable internal focalization is one, in which some events are presented from the different perspectives of different people”(Jeremy, 2000: 258). In No Story, O. Henry adopts variable internal focalization to recall, face and foresee Ada’s emotional life.

When recalling the emotional life in the past, the focalizor coincides with the character—Ada.

“I guess I’m a terrible hayseed, but I can’t help it. G—George Brown and I were

sweethearts since he was eight and I was five. When he was nineteen—that was four years ago—he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he was going to be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then he was coming back for 20

me……On the day he left, he and me got a hammer and a chisel and cut a dime into two pieces. I took one piece and he took the other, and we promised to be true to each other……”(O. Henry,1953: 778)

This delightful memory sets an emotional foundation for the development of the plots. Pure love and moving story arouse great affections for Ada and disdain to the ungrateful George from both Chalmers and the readers. Whether achieving his success or not, he disappoints Ada.

When the focalized object comes to face Ada’s present emotional life choice and foresee the future, the focalizor coincides with all the three characters—Ada, Chalmers and Tripp.

From Ada’s narration, we know that she has been arranged to marry a rich young farmer who basically accords to her marriage criterion. However, she says that,

“But somehow, when it got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn’t

help wishing—well, just thinking about George. Something must have happened to him or he’d have written.” (ibid.: 778)

Obviously, facing the choice of marriage, Ada, who is directly involved in it, is sentimental. Naturally, the focalizor is changed into Chalmers. Compared with Ada, Chalmers is more reasonable. Therefore, he realizes that he has the responsibility to console and help her to make a wise decision.

Firstly he undoubtedly affirms that it is understandable that Miss Lowery cannot forget her first precious love.

“Miss Lowery, life is rather a queer proposition, after all……Our earlier

romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize……But those fondly cherished dreams may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been.” (ibid.: 778)

Then he tactfully changes the topic of conversation to remind her of being realistic.

“But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on

memories.” (ibid.: 778 )

Finally, he skillfully leads Ada to make a wise choice about her marriage:

“May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy—that is, a

contented and harmonious life with Mr.-er—Dodd—if in other ways than romantic recollections he seems to—er—fill the bill, as I might say?” (ibid.: 778)

The focalizor also coincides with Tripp from time to time. In Chalmers’ eyes, his opinion is of no consequence at all to the present event, for his purpose is to make a story of it and obtain his whisky dollar.

“Now, Miss Lowery, you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don’t you? He’s all

right, and good to you, ain’t he? ...... Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, and you’ll be all right.” (ibid.: 779)

He says what Chalmers cannot bear to say. He presents the cruel reality in the city to Ada. However, nobody knows what kind of misery he is suffering in the inner world.

In a word, by applying variable internal focalizations, O. Henry provides more information about different characters and their different attitudes towards love, marriage and life. This enhances the uncertainty of the protagonists’ destiny. Moreover, the brevity and the conciseness of the story are ensured.

2.5.3 Multiple Internal Focalization

Similar to the narration with variable focalization, “the narration with multiple internal focalization is one, in which the epistolary technique allows the same events to be presented more than once from different and contrasting perspectives” (Jeremy, 2000: 258).

In No Story, multiple internal focalization is only used when Tripp and Chalmers describe Ada from their different perspectives.

To Tripp,

“she is rosebuds covered with dew-violets in their mossy bed”. (ibid.:774)

To Chalmer,

“She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter.

When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless confection.” (ibid.: 776)

“Rosebuds covered with dew-violets in their mossy bed” means that Ada is clearly pure and has not been contaminated by the “air” in the city. This also reveals that Tripp describes the memory of his first love and lover. Chalmers’ exaggerated description strengthens Ada’s perfect image and foreshadows his selfless help for her later on.

In conclusion, the application of internal focalization and the choice of an experiencing-I’s focalization directly leads the readers to what the “I” thinks or feels, and thus can arouse greater sympathy from the readers and contribute to the effects of vividness and cordiality. Moreover, internal focalization can expose the characters’ subtle and complicated thoughts more naturally and directly to the readers, who cannot help feeling much closer and more sympathy for the characters.

2.5.4 Direct Discourse in No Story

The typical narrative discourse applied in No Story is direct discourse. Direct discourse has an introductory reporting clause or tag and the quotation marks. G. Leech and M. Short regard the introductory reporting clause and quotation marks as the two features of direct discourse, which show evidence of the narrator’s presence. Moreover, not only words in the quotation marks but also the reporting clause can reveal the conscious and subconscious mental activities of a character’s or the interior monologue.

Now, the conversation between Chalmers and Tripp is taken as an example to reveal the conscious and subconscious mental activities of Tripp’s:

T: “Have you got a dollar?” asked Tripp, with his most fawning look.

C: “I have,” said I; and again I said, “I have,” more loudly and inhospitably……

T: “I don’t want to borrow any” said Tripp, “I thought you’d like to get put onto a

good story……”

C: “What is the story?” I asked.

T: “It’s a girl. A beauty……I took her to a boarding-house......She’s in soak for a

dollar. That’s old Mother McGinnis’ price per day. I’ll show you the house.”

C: “What words are these, Tripp?” said I.

He separated his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking forefinger.

T: “Can’t you see,” he said, “what a rattling fine story it would make? ...... And

it’ll cost you only about four dollars. You’ll make a clear profit of eleven.”

C: “How will it cost me four dollars?” I asked, suspiciously.

T: “One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis,” Tripp answered, promptly, “and two dollars to

pay the girl’s fare back home.”

C: “And the fourth dimension?” I inquired, making a rapid mental calculation.

T: “One dollar to me,” said Tripp. “For whiskey. Are you on?”

……

T: “Don’t you see,” he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, “that this girl has

got to be sent home to-day—not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day?”

……

T: “Can’t you get a story out of it?” he asked, huskily.

C: “Not a line,” said I……But we’ve helped the little lady out, and that’ll have to

be our only reward.”

T: “I’m sorry,” said Tripp, almost inaudibly. “I’m sorry you’re out your money.”

……

C: “What!” I said, looking at him keenly.

T: “Oh yes,” he responded, dully. “George Brown, alias Tripp. What’s the use?”

Barring the W. C. T. U., I’d like to know if anybody disapproves of my having

produced promptly from my pocket Tripp’s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying it in his hand. (ibid.: 774—780)

These direct discourses vividly reflect the development of the characters’ feelings.

Tripp’s conversation contents include: needing a dollar→declaring not to borrow, just providing a good story→desiring for a dollar for whisky→the girl must be sent home→being sorry to Chalmers→revealing his own identity. The relevant inner emotions reflected by reporting clauses change as follows: pretending to be calm→lacking of confidence→being impatient→showing desperate calmness→being sorry→being dull.

Chalmers’ attitude towards Tripp and his feelings are like this: being inhospitable→being indifferent→being impatient→being suspicious→being gratified→being suspicious again→being sympathetic.

In this story, O. Henry mainly adopts direct discourse to display Tripp’s inner world, which gives a skillful combination of Tripp’s inner activities with his actions, emotions and the scenic description. Thus, Tripp’s thoughts can be more fluently conveyed to the readers, which serves to and intensively strengthen the tragic tone of this story and arouse more sympathy for Tripp from the readers. Moreover, direct discourse adds more truthfulness and liveliness to the story.

To sum up, O. Henry adopts various narrative points of view (modes of focalization) in his short stories. And each of them can contribute to the heightening of story themes and the 24

presenting of emotional states. If the story is narrated through zero focalization, this will be dominated by the author’s superior and explanatory tone. Moreover, by applying “O. Henry’s techniques”, he makes the story vivid, truthful and full of suspense. If the story is narrated in the mode of external focalization, then this will be created through great surprise and suspense. Furthermore, the readers are involved in the development of the plots. If the story is written in internal focalization, this will be provided by one or more characters’ experience and attitudes. As for narrative discourse, O. Henry is fond of DD and FDD. By using them, he makes the characters seem to speak for themselves and adds more truthfulness and liveliness to his short stories.

Chapter 3 Moving Narrative Space in O. Henry’s Short Stories

The famous contemporary narratologist Mieke Bal concludes the function of narrative space in two aspects. In the first place, it is “only a frame, a place of action.” The space “can also retain entirely in the background.” In many cases, however, space is “thematized”, it becomes “an object of presentation itself, for its own sake.” Space thus becomes an “acting place” rather than “the place of action”(Bal, 1985:95). People live not only in natural environment but also in a social one. Therefore, the fictional writer must set up a social context so as to disclose the background to the characters’ actions and the development of the plot.

The space in fiction is called narrative space, which refers to the place of the characters’ activities and the region of plot development. In narrative space, O. Henry provides a vivid objective space from the regional environment to the social cultural context. In O. Henry’s short stories, space does not merely refer to the geographical space, but a cultural space of politics, economy, and traditional customs. He devotes different emotions to different spaces.

“Regional space is not only a synonym of geographical space, but also a cultural space which concentrates on politics, economics, religious tradition and customs. It refers to a structure of relation between people”(Xu Dai, 1992:263). As mentioned in 1.1, O. Henry has an abundant life experience, among which the life in New York, Texas ranch in the West and Hondaras in Latin America has a profound and far-reaching effect on his writing career and makes up the three big narrative spaces in his short stories.

3.1 Flourishing East Big City—New York

Coming out of prison in 1903, O. Henry settles down in Manhattan District, New York city and starts his writing career. Naturally, New York becomes the first narrative space in his works and later wins him the honor as “a poet with laurels in Manhattan”. As indicated in one of his most famous short-story collections The Four Million, he cares more about the four million common people living poor lives in New York than about the upper “four hundred”. He often visits slums, restaurants and cafés where he can meet such lower classes in New York as struggling shop girls, unsuccessful artists, impoverished and even homeless vagrants. He chats kindly with them to comprehend their living conditions and inner emotion.

What he cares about are not only the wretched living spaces of various little people in New York, but also their spiritual world. The living space reflects their social status, economic conditions and life styles. Furthermore, their behaviors in this kind of living condition reflect either their lofty personality and mental world or helplessness in the cruel modern city.

The narrative spaces he concerns about most are low-priced flats and furnished rooms. In 26

his most famous short story The Gift of the Magi, the couple lives in a ＄8 per week furnished flat which is similar to a slum. The bed is a shabby little couch; the pier-glass is so narrow that only Della who is slender can obtain a fairly accurate conception of her looks by observing her reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips; the letter-box into which no letter will go; and the electric button from which no moral finger could coax a ring. Although appertaining thereunto is a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young”, even the letters of “Dillingham” look blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. for its owner’s income is shrunk from ＄30 per week to ＄20.

Low-priced flat, blurred card and discarded letter-box and electric button indicate that they lead a hard and arduous life and have little contact with the outer world. As a result, when there is only ＄1.87 at home the mistress of the home can do nothing but flop on the shabby little couch and howl, which instigates the moral reflection from the author that “life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating” (O. Henry,1963:18).All these are due to their limited income of ＄20 per week. However, none of these can reduce love between Della and Jim a little. In order to buy a gift being worthy of the honor of each other, they sell their own possessions in which they both take a mighty pride—Della sells her matchless hair to buy her husband a platinum fob chain and Jim sells his gold watch to buy her wife a set of pure tortoise shell combs which Della has worshiped for long in a Broadway window. Unfortunately, their precious gifts become useless in the end and leave endless pity to the readers. However, they give each other a precious gift which is not among the gifts brought by the Magi.

The Magi are three wonderfully wise men who bring gifts to the Bade in the manger. Thus, they invent the art of giving Christmas presents. The gifts they brought are valuable and wise. Here, the author entitles the story The Gift of the Magi with the purpose that the couple is as wise as the Magi. However, the conclusion O. Henry brings to the story is that:

Two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the

greatest treasures of their house. ……Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi. (ibid. 23)

Nowadays, sending gifts to each other in the West has become a very common custom. However, the gifts in The Gift of the Magi are so extraordinary and worthy to ruminate about that one can be moved into tears and have his soul shocked. Although their Christmas gifts lose their practical value, they gain consideration and comfort of love which enable them to comprehend the true meaning of life.

O. Henry’s another famous love story is A Service of Love. It begins with a seemingly 27

reasonable premise that “When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard” (ibid. 42). In the story, Joe Larrabee is a young man pulsing with a genius of pictorial art, and Delia Caruthers is gifted in music. They both come from rural places to New York to further their studies and fulfill their own art dreams. They meet in an atelier, fall in love, and begin housekeeping in a flat. The flat they rent is so lonesome that “it is something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard” (ibid. 42). They are happy, for they have their art and they have each other. They lead an ideal home life in the little flat where they interchange each other’s ambitions. But after a while art flags before high-priced tuition. In order to support each other’s ambitions for art, Delia gets a part-time job to tutor a general’s daughter music and Joe makes sketches for others in a park. However, an occasional accident reveals the real situation that they both do some hard jobs in the same laundry. So far the conclusion is drawn from the premise and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect—When one loves, no service seems too hard.

It is tragic that two talented young men are forced by impoverished economic situation to sacrifice their art for living. To comfort each other, they both keep the grieved feelings in heart, and fabricate a fantastic lie and make the atmosphere in that little room warm and fragrant. To sublimate the theme of the story, O. Henry puts forward his comment in a humorous way:

If a home is happy it cannot fit too close—let the dresser collapse and become a

billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. 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. (ibid.:43)

Here O. Henry applies several pairs of homophones: “Hatteras” and “hatrack”; “Cape Horn” and “cape horse” and “Labrador” and “laborer door”.

The Gift of the Magi and A Service of Love have not only similar geographical space, but also similar thematic space. What The Gift of the Magi eulogizes is a service of love, and what A Service of Love services is the gift of the Magi.

Apart from the stories above having love as their thematic space, O. Henry also produces other famous stories with the same narrative space, while having different thematic spaces. The quaint old Greenwich Village inhabited by unsuccessful poor artists in The Last Leaf is a typical O. Henry’s narrative space. The living condition of crazily broken streets, places with strange angles and curves, north windows, eighteenth-century gables, Dutch attics and low rents reflects the dwellers’ poverty-stricken economic situation and low social status, and indicates their vague 28

art prospect and uncertain future.

Johnsy’s dream is to paint the Bay of Naples some day, but she contracts such serious pneumonia that she can only lie in the poor bed staring at the blank side of the brick wall counting back leaves left on an old, old ivy vine. What’s worse, she insists that her life is doomed to end up with the falling of the last leaf. The old Behrman’s dream is painting a masterpiece some day and leaves that “colony”, but “forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress’s robe” and is reduced to “earning a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional” (O. Henry,1909: 203).

In order to save the young life of Johnsy’s, the old Behrman paints on the wall a leaf at the cost of his own life when the last leaf falls. The painted leaf is Behrman’s long-lived masterpiece, is the last sparkler in Behrman’s lifetime of setbacks and frustrations, and is a symbol of friendship among the poor.

The geographical space in The Last Leaf (1906) is the living space of these little artists—quaint old Greenwich Village, a miniature of the social bottom in the USA. It is a corner neglected by the society. People living there own not only the ambition for art, but also the holy soul of self-sacrifice for others. O. Henry shows great sympathy for their dismal life, and cherishes endless admiration to their sublime dignity. In that society where love, friendship and even soul can be sold, where psychology and emotion are distorted, O. Henry focuses on pure love and sincere friendship. By doing so, O. Henry raises the narrative space from wretched practical space to sublime spiritual space.

Although the poor show unselfishness and sacrifice to each other, they are too weak to avoid various tragedies happening from time to time in these rooms. If what we get from the stories above is a smile with tears, then from the following stories we can only get sympathy, heart-broken and indignation.

In The Cop and the Anthem (1906), Soapy can only move uneasily on a bench in the open Madison Square when winter comes. The hibernatorial ambition of Soapy is not so high as the rich, whose destination are Mediterranean cruises, soporific Southern skies and drifting in the Vesuvian Bay, his is just three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats on the Island. Thus, he tries all means to break the law with the purpose to be put into prison. Contrary to his desire, again and again the police turn a blind eye to his illegal actions. However, he is dramatically sentenced to a three-month imprisonment on the Island when he is influenced by the anthem from an old church and determines to make a man of himself again.

In An Unfinished Story (1906) the shopping girl Manhattan Dulcie lives in a furnished room 29

where a couch-bed, a dresser, a table, a washstand, and a chair are all that the guilty landlady provides. She is paid only five or six dollars a week so that she often suffers from starvation. As a result, she is exposed to being seduced by the dandy Piggy.

In The Skylight Room (1906), Typist Miss Leeson lives in a skylight room whose four walls seem to close in upon her like the sides of a coffin. A square of blue sky in the daytime and a star at night are what she can see through the glass of the little skylight. In the end, she cannot escape form death.

The Furnished Room (1906) records a tragedy that a young man who comes to New York to seek her girl friend, and commits suicide disappointedly with gas. Revealed by the landladies afterward, his girlfriend died in the same room and in the same way a week ago.

All these homeless little people shift restless as fugacious as time. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from one furnished room to another furnished room, transients forever—transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. Their miserable conditions are directly due to two kinds of exploiting people—greedy housekeepers and brutal employers. Housekeepers are like “unwholesome, surfeited worms that seek nuts (edible lodgers) to fill their hollow shells (furnished rooms)” (O. Henry,1963: 43). Furthermore, in O. Henry’s opinion, those who “hired working girls and paid ’em five or six dollars a week to live on” are more immortal than those who “set fire to an orphan asylum, or murdered a blind man for his pennies” (ibid.:112).

Here, O. Henry opens a special window of the USA society for us to comprehend the living conditions of the lower stratum people. They hide in the social corners, sign for the present poverty and the uncertain future. In the preface of his collection of short stories describing little people in Manhattan The Four Million he writes,

Not very long ago someone invented the assertion that there were only “Four

The natural space which is also the living space of these little people is such a miserable place as furnished-room; the thematic space, or the spiritual space of them is a place characterized with lofty, selflessness and sacrifice for others. Cherishing great sympathy to these little people, O. Henry frequently raises the narrative space from a miserable regional one to a lofty spiritual one in his stories.

3. 2 Broad West Prairie—Texas

Because of rather delicate health, in March of 1882, O. Henry travels to the West with his father’s friend and spends two years on a ranch in La Salle County, Texas. Texas is a land of ranches and cowboys, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. He accompanies them happily and likes the ranch life so much that he learns all the skills about ranching, including riding, roping, and herding. There, O. Henry absorbs the atmosphere and spirit and color of the Southwest. (O. Henry，1963：Introduction:) Thus, Texas becomes his second narrative space in his works. Stories in the collection Heart of the West (1904) are mainly with the West as their narrative space.

Contrary to Manhattan in New York whose gloomy aspects attract more of the author’s attention, O. Henry concerns more about the positive aspects in Texas. To reveal his writing attitudes toward the East and the West, he often quotes the famous English writer Rudyard Kipling’s saying of “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” In O. Henry’s opinion, the West refers to those ranches in the Southwest filled with freedom and vigor, while the East refers to those developed industrial states in the Northeast filled with sadness and morbidity. As a result, O. Henry writes the West with high admiration.

In O. Henry’s works, in the West, the atmosphere is characterized with fresh air, charming ranches, fertile earth, and large squares of crops，while people are characterized with unsophisticated human nature, enterprising enthusiasm, competitive courage, and pioneering spirit. It is the Western cowboys that dominate the destiny of the Western ranches, and they are hosts of the West. Protagonists in O. Henry’s western works are Kings, Queens, Princesses, Prince-consorts and Ministers in the kingdom of horses and cattle. All of them are heroes on branches. With their humanistic virtue, they help the weak and vanquish wickedness and rivals.

Hygeia at the Solito is O. Henry’s masterpiece among his stories with the West as their narrative space. Curtis Raidler, who is the Nueces County cattleman, meets McGuire at San Antonio station. The latter is an all-round gambler and swindler, but at that moment he is penniless and gets a bad case of tuberculosis of the lungs. The cattleman brings McGuire to his ranch by instinct of saving others:

A creature was ill and helpless; he had the power to render aid—these were the

only postulates required for the cattleman to act. They formed his system of logic and the most of his creed. (O. Henry, 1904: 98)

Therefore, it is natural for Curtis Raidler to bring McGuire back as the seventh invalid and help him recover unpaid. However, McGuire doesn’t appreciate his kindness and shuts himself in his room, whining, complaining, cursing, and accusing. Coming from the East, he is a 31

thoroughly reactionary selfish fellow. Fortunately, misdiagnose proves his being playing sickness and he is sent to a remote ranch. There, close to the fresh air and the ground, he finds health and strength. In the end, McGuire realizes that he cannot “apply the measure of the streets he had walked to a range bounded by the horizon and the fourth dimension” (ibid.:98) any more, and declares that cowboys on the branch are the best friends he has ever made.

Hygeia at the Solito made up with Cattleman Curtis Raidler’s humanism and the healthy nature situation in the branch enables him to rebuild himself in both body and soul.

Another story reveals the rebuilding ability of the West is Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches. Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, a bankrupt young widow who has ever been a member of New York upper-class is forced to manage a ranch in Texas. There, she recovers from the sorrow of losing husband and property, wins her new life and love, and fulfills the dream of “From the Four Hundred to the Flocks”.

People in the West have their own special outlook on the world, life and love, which is characterized with honesty, courage and punctiliousness. Josefa O’Donnell in The Princess and the Puma (1904) is the Princess in their “empire”. She inherits nature of warmth from her mother, a store of intrepidity, common sense and the faculty of ruling from her father. She can shoot dead a violent Mexican lion by herself. The cattle-queen in Hearts and Crosses (1904) saves her family and recalls her husband back by sending him a white heifer with a brand of a heart and a cross inside of it as a symbol of love.

Although stories about the West occupy an important place in O. Henry’s writing career, compared with those famous stories with New York as their narrative space, they reveal the defects of roughness and plainness. What’s more, the themes are too superficial to have profound influences as those New York ones. These western stories are filled with contrasts between honesty and wickedness, between right and wrong. Similarly, the positive aspects in the West will defeat the negative aspects either at home or abroad. Frankly speaking, O. Henry pays much more attention to the bright side in the West rather than the gloomy side. Put differently, O. Henry’s interest in the Western stories is in reality as he perceives it, not necessarily as it exists. This is due to the precious impression and memory on the West cherished by the author since the youth.

3.3 Miserable Exile Place—Honduras in Latin America

Compared with the stories with the New York City and Texas as their narrative spaces, stories with the narrative space of Latin America occupy much less portion in O. Henry’s works. This doesn’t mean that life in Latin America has less effect on the author, but that it is too miserable in his mind to mention too much in his works.

Being accused of embezzlement, O. Henry exiles to Honduras in Latin America where he suffers from starvation and sleeps in the open. Since declaring independence at the beginning of the 19th century, Honduras has been suffering from chaotic political situations at home and aggression abroad. Being thrown into such a condition, O. Henry is forced to be a deceiver, a robber and a member of the adventures. However, in O. Henry’s opinion, deceivers and robbers are all products of that inhuman society, and they are forced by life or reduced by situation. Although they do harm to others, they are kind and friendly in nature and will show their kindness to the weak from time to time.

A Double-dyed Deceiver (1909) in the collection of Roads of Destiny (1909) is a typical story with Latin America as its narrative space. The protagonist the Liano Kid shoots a young man in old Justo Valdos’s gambling house and is forced to flee to Buenas Tierras, coast of South America. There, instigated by Thacker (the United States consul at Buenas Tierras), he disguises himself as the rich Old Santos Uriques’ lost son to deceive their money. When he discovers that the young man he has killed before is just the son of the Old Santos Uriques’, the Liano Kid decides to continue acting as the son. By doing so, he brings happiness and console to the old couple. Just as indicated by the title, the Liano Kid is a double-dyed deceiver. However, different deceiving purposes reveal different humanistic nature. The former is an evil one, while the latter is a kind one. The Liano Kid evaluates himself as a deceiver in that world properly, “I’m a low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead of God, but I’ll travel it to the end” (O. Henry, 1909: 143).

O. Henry shows different emotion to his stories with different narrative spaces. To those with Latin America as their narrative space, he holds the opinion that destiny and the objective condition affect the protagonists’ behavior. Therefore, he names one of his collections as Roads of Destiny. However, their destiny is dominated by the social situation. O. Henry firmly believes that they will reform themselves whenever chances come. A Retrieved Reformation (1909) in Roads of Destiny reflects the author’s writing intention—giving those wrong doers a chance to reform themselves.

Chapter 4 Coordinate Narrative Time in O. Henry’s Short Stories

Compared with the spatial art such as architecture, sculpture and painting, literature is an art developing and completing in time, which belongs to a temporal art in nature as well as music. In narrative fiction, time includes story time, which is the duration of the purported events of the narrative and text time (or narrative time), which is “the disposition of elements in the text” (Shlomith, 2002:45).

Although people have studied a lot about story time and narrative time, the most influential one is from the narrative theorist Gerald Genette. According to Genette—narrative time is not necessarily the same as story time. He isolates three major aspects of temporal manipulation or articulation in the movement from story to text. Studying the possible relationship between the time of story or plot and the time of narrative, he determines that they may be classified in terms of order(the relations between the assumed sequence of events in the story and their actual order of presentation in the text), pace or duration (the relations between the extent of time that events are supposed to have actually taken up，and the amount of text devoted to presenting those same events) and frequency (how often something happens in story compared with how often it is narrated in text). (Gennete, 1980:11)

This chapter aims at analyzing O. Henry’s three short stories—The Furnished Room，The Gift of the Magi and A Service of Love by applying relevant theories on narrative time.

4.1 Physical Time Unites with Psychological Time

To study the temporal order of a certain narrative is comparing the order of events or temporal sections arranged in the text with the order of these same events or temporal segments arranged in the story. As a result, the story order is explicitly indicated by the narrative itself or can be inferred from an indirect clue. According to Genette, this comparison results in anachrony. An anachrony is any segment of text which is told at a point that is earlier or later than its natural or logical position in the event sequence in the relevant story. Departures in the order of presentation in the text from the order in which events evidently occurred in the story are termed by Genette anachronies. It mainly includes two forms of temporal motion track: flashback and foreshadowing. “A flashback is any evocation after the fact of an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where we are at any given moment; a foreshadowing is any narrative that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place later” (ibid.:40).

In The Furnished Room, the temporal order of events in the story is disarranged and indicated by the protagonist’s psychological activities and the landladies’ conversations. Moreover, text time is occupied by psychological time much more than by physical time. 34

4.1.1 Physical Time Serves Psychological Time

In this part, the temporal processes in The Furnished Room (O. Henry, 1963:143-149) are analyzed through comparing the order of events or temporal sections arranged in the text with the order of these same events or temporal segments in the story from angles of both physical time and psychological time.

The Furnished Room is a short story about a nameless young man who comes to New York to find his girl friend and commits suicide in the same room as her girl friend dies a week before. There are around 2500 words and altogether 42 paragraphs in it. The order of events and temporal sections are arranged in the text as follows:

A: a general introduction and commentary to the district of the furnished rooms from the narrator. (Paragraph 1-2, 120 words)

B: The young man rings the door-bell from door to door and consults his girl friend’s traits uselessly. (Paragraph 3, 50 words)

C: He engages a furnished room from a landlady at the 12th door. (Paragraph 4-11)

a: his impression on the landlady.(Paragraph 4, 40 words)

b: his impression on the stairs.(Paragraph 7, 130 words)

c: the landlady’s tedious introduction to the room. (Paragraph 6, 8 and 10, 130 words) d: rather concise description on the young man’s words and actions when engaging the room.( Paragraph 5, 9 and 11, 30words)

D: He consults the landlady about her girl-friend’s traits and gets an answer of “No.” (Paragraph 12-13, 40 words)

E: He recalls his five months of ceaseless interrogation about his girl friend since her disappearance from home and guesses her beloved’s whereabouts. (Paragraph 14, 100words)

a: His girl friend leaves home

b: He looks for his girl friend for five months

F: his illusive consciousness and unfathomable thoughts derive from the environment of the furnished room. (Paragraph 15-19, 600 words)

G: He smells the strong, sweet odor of mignonette, searches his girl friend’s spirit trace neurotically, and cries a few words such as “What, dear?” “She has been in this room.” and “Yes, dear!” (Paragraph 20-24, 500 words)

a: He searches the trace of his girl friend.

b: He is absorbed in illusion.

H: He hurries downstairs to ask who occupies the room before him and gets disappointed answers. (Paragraph 25-32, 200words)

a: He hurries downstairs and consults the landlady. (30 words)

b: The landlady gives him fabricated answers.

I: He sinks into despair with the perfume of mignonette’s departing and commits suicide with gas. (Paragraph 33-34, 100 words)

J: A conversation between the landladies reveals the fact that his girl friend kills herself with the gas just one week before. (Paragraph 35-42, 240 words)

a: His girl friend killed herself a week ago

Inferring from clues in the text, we can conclude that the story order should be:

E(a)→E(b) →J(a) →B→C(d) →D→G(a) →H(a)→I

Seen from the two orders listed above, the story order is disturbed by amounts of psychological activities. The time occupied by psychological activities forms psychological time. Moreover, both the plots and the objective actions of the young man are rather concise. However, either pure psychological activities or environment and actions filled with illusive consciousness and unfathomable thoughts are narrated thoroughly. In other words, psychological time is much longer than physical time.

Among them, B, C(d), D, H(a) and I belong to objective actions which have only 250 words altogether, while actions exaggerated by psychological activities in C, E, F and G have words of as much as 1500.

Obviously, in The Furnished Room psychological time occupies a much larger portion than physical time. What the readers derive from the story is not the story plot, but an influence of mood. O. Henry simplifies the story plots and emphasizes the description of psychological activities, aiming at emphasizing the story’s tragic theme and constructing a depressing atmosphere.

4.1.2 Episodes of Life Annotate the True Meaning of Life

After reading The Furnished Room, we can generalize the main idea of the story like this: “In a peaceful village, a couple falls in love with each other ever since they are children. Some day, the girl travels to New York to fulfill her ‘American Dream’. She tries all means to be one of the ‘Four Hundred’ in New York. However, contrary to her wishes, she fails and commits suicide in despair. Her boyfriend who comes to look for her dies in the same room and in the same way as she does.”

For a writer of novels, the story can be rewritten into an article of thousands of words. The short story master O. Henry chooses only a chunk of several hours to construct an excellent short story of 2500 words and shows the readers a miserable life picture in New York.

The modern big city New York bears various attractions to the world, and at the same time it is filled with horrible traps. For “the four hundred”, it is a paradise; while for “the four 36

million”, it is a hell. Just as the nameless young man thinks—“it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime” (O. Henry,1963: 145). And “the furnished room” is the best symbol of the hell. Greedy landladies unscrupulously solicit homeless lodgers to fill their furnished rooms with “shadowy halls”, “mildewed carpet”, “foul and tainted air”, and “decayed furniture”. In the furnished rooms, American dreams are shattered, love vanishes, and the last choice is to die. This is the true meaning of life for the poor in New York revealed by an episode of a young man’s in O. Henry’s short story—The Furnished Room.

4.2 Accelerated and Decelerated Narrative Speed

According to Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, “duration deals with the relations between duration in the story (measured in minutes，hours，days，months，years)and the length of text devoted to it (in lines and pages)”. (Shlomith，1983:52)The measure brought about by this relation is narrative pace (speed). Genette proposes to use “constancy of pace” as the “norm” to examine degrees of duration. Constancy of pace in narrative is the unchanged ratio between story-duration and textual length. Thus, two forms of duration degree result from this measure—acceleration and deceleration.

In acceleration, a long period of story is reduced into a short segment in the text. While in deceleration, a short period of story is expressed in a long segment in the text. The maximum narrative speed is ellipsis, the minimum one is pause, and summary and scene are two intermediaries between them.

On the basis of the theory above, now the thesis is turned to O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, in which these four basic forms of narrative speed are applied. Here ellipsis and summary are generalized into the narrative speed of acceleration in narration and scene and pause are generalized into deceleration.

4.2.1 Acceleration in Narration

4.2.1.1 Ellipsis

In an ellipsis, “zero textual space corresponds to some story duration”(ibid.:53). As mentioned above, ellipsis is the maximum narrative speed in the four basic ones. When an ellipsis appears, the rhythms of the story are accelerated greatly.

There are two obvious ellipses in The Gift of the Magi. The first one appears in Paragraph 18—“Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings”(O. Henry,1963:20). It is a paragraph narrating how Della selects a Christmas gift for her husband, Jim.

The process of carefully selecting is omitted. However, the phrase “tripped by on rosy 37

wings” reveals Della’s joyous feelings when ransacking the stores for Jim’s Christmas present. Furthermore, this shows the change of her mood— with 1.87 dollars she has nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl, now with 20 dollars she is too excited to delay any time. Her excited feelings without a trace of sadness for cutting her beautiful hair also reveal her utmost love for Jim. The ellipsis reflects Della’s excitement and suggests that she loves her husband rather than herself, which serves for the theme.

The second ellipsis is in Paragraph 21. After buying a Christmas present “being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim”, Della has to repair her hair when returning home. All that the narrator mentions is that “Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy”(ibid.:20).

As an unimportant plot in the story, it is unnecessary to narrate it thoroughly. A sentence is enough to express Della’s cleverness, nature for perfection and helplessness.

4.2.1.2 Summary

According to Genette，summary is the narration in a few paragraphs or a few pages of several days，months，or years of existence，without details of action or speech. (Genette, 1980:95-96) Moreover, according to Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, “In summary, the pace is accelerated through a textual ‘condensation’ or ‘compression’ of a given story into a story-period into a relatively short statement of its main features. The degree of condensation can, of course, vary from summary to summary, producing multiple degrees of acceleration”. (Shlomith, 1983:53) Therefore, in The Gift of the Magi, the story of several month, years and days is often summarized into a paragraph or several sentences.

Summary enables a novel to be concise and succinct. In The Gift of the Magi, there are ten summaries. The beginning of the story is a typical one.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in

pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. (O. Henry, 1963:18)

Such an abrupt beginning in summary exposes the background of the story to the readers—Della has only one dollar and eighty-seven cents on Christmas Eve. One can imagine the awkward situations that when she bargains with others and saves every penny for several months. Such a concise beginning with a summary gains enough attention from the readers.

The second summary appears in Paragraph 6:

Only ＄1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent

planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.(ibid.:19)

To buy a proper Christmas present for her beloved Jim, Della has been saving money for several months. Unavoidably, Della will contrive to buy what a kind of present from time to time. The summary not only simplifies the plot, but also sets suspense between the limited money and the gift’s quality.

4.2.2 Deceleration in Narration

4.2.2.1 Scene

In scene, story-duration and text-duration are conventionally considered identical. The purest scenic form is dialogue. Although dialogue is the purest form of scene, a detailed narration of an event should also be considered as scenic. (Shlomith, 1983:54) In The Gift of the Magi, there exist six scenes in this sense. Here, two typical ones are chosen to be analyzed. The first one is in Paragraph 27-34:

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and

sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present……”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously……

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m

me without my hair, ain’t I?”

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della……Be good to me……Maybe the hairs of

my head were numbered,” she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you……”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. (O. Henry,

1963:21)

Appearing when Jim gets home, this scene describes Della’s actions, emotion and Jim’s reactions to her in great detail. After intensive struggles in her inner world, Della plucks up her courage to 39

tell Jim the fact about her cut hair. Moreover, she puts great emphasis to her uncountable love to Jim. Jim changes from startled to unbelievable and then to awaken, finally he embraces his Della. Both Della and the readers are relieved by his forgiving behavior.

The second one is in Paragraph 35-44

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything

in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less……”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream

of joy; and then, alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails……

For there lay The Combs—the set of combs……They were expensive combs, she

knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession……

……

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, Oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her

open palm……

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? ......Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hand under the

back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “……I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs……”

(ibid.:22)

This scene brings the story to its climax. Jim classifies his startled expression in the former scene with his Christmas present for his Dell. The present changes Della from extreme of joy to extreme of sadness. Similarly, she calms herself in the end and shows her present to Jim. Calmly and helplessly, Jim reveals the fact that their Christmas presents are too nice to use just at the present, for he has sold his watch for Della’s combs just as Della has sold her hair for his fob chain.

Both of these scenes create an effect of vividness and immediacy, enabling the reader to experience the situations there and then.

4.2.2.2 Pause

Pause is the minimum narrative speed. In a pause, “the text corresponds to zero story 40

duration” (Shlomith, 1983:53). When a pause occurs, the time of the story stops, and the time of the narration continues. Usually, a pause can be a description, a commentary, an exposition, and a direct address of the narrator to the readers.

Pauses of all these four kinds can be found in The Gift of the Magi. They include descriptions of the furnished flat, Jim’s expression when getting home and that expensive set of combs, comments on the couple’s actions, and expositions of the James Dillingham Youngs’ two possessions, and direct addresses of the narrator to the readers.

They play important roles in displaying their straitened economic circumstances, precious Christmas gifts and selfless affection for each other. Furthermore, the direct addresses of the narrator to the readers express O. Henry’s incomparable esteem to the protagonists—“Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi” (O. Henry, 1963:23).

4.3 Tense Narrative Impetus

4.3.1 Frequency

Frequency refers to the relation between the number of times an event appears in the story and the number of times it is narrated (or mentioned) in the text. (Shlomith, 1983:53) According to Genette, “a narrative, whatever it is, may tell once what happened once, n times what happened n times, n times what happened once, once what happened n times”(Genette, 1980:114). The relations between such possibilities can be reduced to three main forms: singulative narrative (narrating once what happened once and narrating n times what happened n times), repeating narrative (narrating n times what happened once) and iterative narrative (narrating one time what happened n times). (ibid. 1980:114-116)

Although O. Henry applies singulative narrative in most of his short stories, the other two forms can be found occasionally in some of his short stories to create narrative impetus. For this,

A Service of Love is a typical text to be analyzed.

The outstanding repeating narrative is a sentence from the female protagonist Delia—“When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard.” In fact, the sentence is uttered by Delia only once when her husband Joe denies that her giving lessons is art. However, it is repeated altogether five times in the whole text. Three times are narrated by the narrator: firstly as the story’s premise; secondly as their marriage’s impetus; and thirdly as the reason for Delia to give music lessons. The fourth time it is uttered by Delia herself as the excuse to giving lessons. The last time is changed by the beloved couple into a conclusion showing that the premise is incorrect: “When one loves, no service seems too hard.”

This repeating narrative is dramatically important in that it serves as the impetus of the 41

story’s development. The readers’ attention is attracted from the beginning to the end. It seems as though all that they do aimed at pursuing the success of their art until the end. Delia claims that she doesn’t quit her music and she is always with her music when teaching and learning. Moreover, by doing so, her husband can keep on with his studies. Similarly, Joe declares that he is continuing his pursuit for art by selling his sketches made in the park. To the readers, both of them are keeping studying and working in their own art field, and all that they do is for their own and the other’s art. When the narrative impetus is in its maximum, the readers guess and look forward to their success in art. Just at this moment the fact is revealed—for the last two weeks, they have been working in the same laundry. The narrative impetus vanishes, the story is finished, and the premise is proved to be incorrect.

There are two iterative narratives in A Service of Love. The first is narrated to describe their short-time happy everyday life:

But the best, ……was the home life in the little flat—the ardent, voluble chats

after the day’s study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions—ambitions interwoven each with the other’s or else inconsiderable—the mutual help and inspiration……and stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 P. M. (O. Henry, 1963:43)

Another equally important one is about their living schedule during the next week:

During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was

enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised and kissed at 7 o’clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o’clock when he returned in the evening. (ibid.:44)

It is useless and impossible to list their monotonous life schedule day after day. Moreover, this regular and mysterious lifestyle sets suspense for the story’s developing, and at the same time the narrative impetus is improved.

4.3.2 The Designing and Removal of Suspense

As is known to the world, surprising ending is the most outstanding feature in O. Henry’s short stories. However, the essential factor behind the surprising ending is the setting of suspense. Suspense can be found in most of his short stories and contribute to create not only the surprising 42

ending but also great narrative impetus.

A Service of Love is taken as an example for analysis. Suspense arises five times in this story.

An author might pick up various techniques or methods to evoke suspense. According to Bal, “suspense is the result of the procedures by which the readers or the character is made to ask questions which are only answered later”(Bal, 1985:114). In other words, suspense can be achieved by detaining some information, i.e., to lengthen the interval between the raised question and the disclosure of the answer. Since the text goes linearly and the reader reads word by word and line by line, they have to hold their question for a while, until they find it. During this process, suspense is aroused and intensified. At the same time the narrator offers some information to challenge the readers’ way of thinking.

Suspense arises at the very beginning of the story. After declaring “When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard”, the author complements immediately that “That is our premise. This story will draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect”(O.Henry,1963:42). What kind of conclusion will be drawn from it? Why is the premise incorrect? This is a general suspense, and afterwards suspense is evoked for a series of times,

In Paragraph 23, the readers learn that in order to make some morning-effect sketches, Joe leaves home at 7 o’clock in the morning. However, why does he return home at 7 o’clock in the afternoon for the whole following two weeks?

In Paragraph 24, Delia is found rather weary when getting home. Then why does she describe situations about “her student” tirelessly in the following two long paragraphs?

In Paragraph 33, there is such a sentence: “Joe……washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hand.” As an artist, traces on his hand are doomed to be paint, while why does the author use such words as “seemed to be”?

Then in Paragraph 34, “Half an hour later, Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.” Facing inquiry of her husband, Delia’s lies cannot be belied any more—“Clementina...Welsh rabbit…spilled…boiling hot…my hand and wrist……the furnace man or somebody in the basement—out to a drugstore……Five o’clock, I think…the iron—I mean the rabbit……”(ibid. :46)

Then in the following paragraphs, suspense evoked from the beginning till now is removed.

Delia, “I couldn’t get any pupils. And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your

lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry.”

Joe, “……I sent up this waste cotton and oil from the engine-room this afternoon

for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing –iron. I have been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.” (ibid.: 46-47)

Finally, in the last two sentences, the couple draws a conclusion from the premise at the very beginning—“When one loves, no service seemed too hard.”

Till now, the information held back before is released, and the suspense is removed. “The effect of suspense gives a manifest expression to the privilege of the authorial or, possibly, the dramatized narrator, in whose hands information is stored up and at whose will it is released or held back”(Shen Dan, 1995:124). In this story, suspense arises frequently so that more and more questions are aroused in the readers’ mind. Moreover, information serving all these questions are stored up to the end of the story. As a result, just as what Leech and Short argue “the element of suspense clearly depends on the size of the anticipatory constituent: the longer the constituent is, the greater the burden upon the memory, and the greater the tension”(Leech, 2001：226). Suspense creates great narrative impetus for the text.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

As one of the three greatest short-story masters in the world, O. Henry enjoys equal literary status with Chekhov in Russia and Maupassant in France. He has profoundly influenced the course of American short story. “He still emerges, by his huge achievements and the immense popularity of his particular method, as an astonishingly persistent influence on the short story of almost every decade since his day”(Kirkpatrick, 1987: 282). Focusing on incidents of everyday life and characters of various kinds, O. Henry provides the readers a vivid picture of his time. Critics have paid enough attention to his story theme of humanity, story structure filled with such O. Henry’s technique as vivid plots, frequent coincidences, surprising ending and his humorous language.

By applying relevant theories of modern narratology, this thesis mainly analyzes O. Henry’s several famous short stories in detail from three aspects: various points of view (modes of focalization) and relevant narrative discourses, moving narrative space and coordinate narrative time.

Through the investigation of different focalizations (zero focalization, external focalization and internal focalization) and narrative discourses in O. Henry’s three short stories—The Marionettes, The Rathskeller and The Rose, and No Story, the author finds that in different stories, O. Henry employs different focalizations. The adoption of different focalizations provides the readers with a whole picture of the life of O. Henry’s time from different angles. Through the shift of focalization, lots of incompatible attitudes, feelings and ideas of not only the author but also the characters are presented. Furthermore, each mode of focalization takes its significance in achieving the thematic importance for the story. Moreover, through the detailed analysis of O. Henry’s several short stories, the readers find that he prefers to apply mainly two kinds of narrative discourses—direct discourse and free direct discourse. The application of these two kinds of narrative discourses contributes to controlling the narrative distance and the narrative point of view.

Through the analysis of the moving narrative space in O. Henry’s tens of short stories with New York, Texas and Honduras as their narrative space respectively, the author finds that O. Henry melts his living experience into his works. The narrative space in his works refers not only to a geographical space, but also a cultural one of politics, economy, and traditional customs. He devotes different emotions to different spaces. He shows sympathy to New York, appreciation to Texas and forgiveness to Honduras.

The narrative time in O. Henry’s three short stories—The Furnished Room，The Gift of the Magi and A Service of Love is analyzed from aspects of physical time and psychological time , 45

narrative speed and narrative impetus respectively. Through the analysis of the time of these three short stories in terms of order, duration and frequency, the readers can find that physical time is united with psychological time coordinately, the tempo of narration is controlled well by acceleration and deceleration between story time and text time, and narrative impetus is tensed by adjusting frequency and designing and removing suspense.

At present, narratology has been further valued and gradually applied to analyzing modern fictions. This thesis, by providing detailed analyses of O. Henry’s several representative short stories, illustrates the significance of O. Henry’s narrative strategies in enforcing his story theme of humanity and portraying his characters.

We must note that, O. Henry’s success as a writer lies not only in his technique of vivid plots, frequent coincidences, surprising ending and humorous language, but also in his skillful narrative strategies. In the meantime, it is hoped that this thesis can help to enrich the studies and offer a new angle of narrative strategies to research on O. Henry’s short stories.

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Publications during the Postgraduate Program

[1].赵素花．女性意识的觉醒、回归、蔓延与超越――《紫色》中黑人女性独立过程解读[J]．湖北教育学院学报，2007（1）：15-16，19．

论欧亨利短篇小说的叙事策略

论欧·亨利短篇小说的叙事策略

作者：

学位授予单位：赵素花广西师范大学

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1.期刊论文樊林.FAN Lin 人性的光辉永恒的魅力——欧·亨利短篇小说人性主题探索 -盐城师范学院学报（人文社会科学版）2006,26(3)

欧·亨利短篇小说以人性作为主题,引起读者广泛的共鸣.欧·亨利小说一方面歌颂人性美,一方面批判违反人性的假丑恶.在这些表现人性主题的篇章中,作家把二者巧妙地揉和在一起,两者映衬,强烈对照,使作品显示出永恒的魅力.

2.期刊论文樊林匠心独运的反衬惊世骇俗的震撼--浅议欧·亨利短篇小说的艺术特色 -西安建筑科技大学学报(社会科学版)2003,22(4)

欧·亨利的短篇小说享誉世界文坛.他的短篇小说一个非常明显的艺术特色,就是很善于运用反衬手法,产生非常突出的艺术效果.

3.期刊论文杜鹃莫泊桑与欧·亨利短篇小说创作手法比较 -科技信息（学术版）2007(7)

莫泊桑和欧·亨利都是世界短篇小说巨匠,但两位作家在创作题材、语言、情节等方面存在很多差异.

4.学位论文徐国盛论欧·亨利短篇小说写作技巧 2001

欧·亨利是美国杰出的小说家,批判现实主义作家.他以新颖的构思,诙谐的语言,悬念突变的手法,表现了二十世纪初的美国社会,开辟了美国式短篇小说的新途径.他的作品富于生活情趣,被誉为"美国生活的幽默百科全书".他一生创作了近三百篇短篇小说,被誉为高产作家.美国于一九一八年设"欧·亨利纪念奖",专门奖励每年度的最佳短篇小说.一九六二年,世界和平理事会还曾经把他列为当年纪念的世界名人之一.该文研究了欧·亨利历久不磨的短篇小说创作中的主要题材与内容,独树一帜的创作手法与技巧,强调了欧·亨利在美国乃至世界文坛的重要地位. 该文共分为五个部分. 第一部分是引言.这部分概要说明了作者研究欧·亨利及其短篇小说创作的主旨.欧·亨利是现代短篇小说的创始人,是二十世纪前七十年期间最博学最有影响的作家之一.他的小说生动活泼,妙趣横生,悦人耳目,别具一格,脍炙人口,至今吸引着广大读者.欧·亨利的艺术技巧被誉为"欧·亨利手法",即欧·亨利式的幽默和欧·亨利式的结尾,风靡世界文坛.他与契诃夫,莫泊桑一向被称为世界短篇小说三大师.通过研究欧·亨利短篇小说创作的主题和语言艺术,旨在研究欧·亨利对美国文学传统的继承与发展,进一步认识他的创作成就与文学地位,学习与借鉴他的语言艺术与创作风格.这对我们有着极其宝贵的学术意义和深远的历史意义. 第二部分概要介绍了欧·亨利的生平,主要作品,创作基点,主要文学成就和成功的关键. 欧·亨利原名威廉·西德尼·波特,1862年9月11日生于北卡罗来纳州的格林斯堡镇的一个医生家庭.他的家境贫寒,没有受到更多的教育.他先后做过药剂员,会计员,土地局办事员,出纳员和新闻记者.命运对波特来了点幽默,以一场官司把他从波特变成了欧·亨利,从一个专栏作家变成了一个具有世界影响的小说家.他的每一阶段的生活都为他将来的创作提供了相当丰富的材料,而且他生活的每一阶段本身都可以写成一篇完美的短篇小说. 他以一周一篇的速度为杂志写小说,分别收入《四百万》(1906),《剪亮的灯盏》(1907),以及《滚石》(1913)等十余部集子里,19xx年6月5日,欧·亨利在纽约病逝,年仅48岁. 欧·亨利的创作始终立足于他的资产阶级民主自由思想,他专于描写下层人物的贫苦生活和精神苦闷,顾怜他们的不幸,不满富有者的贪婪,但又常常沉醉于小市民的幻想中,希望在某些资产者身上发现善良人性. 作为一个平民作家,欧·亨利的文学成就主要体现在一系列描写纽约曼哈顿区生活的作品.他善于把曼哈顿区的街道、小饭馆和破旧公寓的气氛渲染得十分逼真,因此有"曼哈顿的桂冠诗人"之称.他常以"含泪的微笑"来抚慰受损害者的心灵所受的创伤. 欧·亨利短篇小说成功的关键在于他善于捕捉和把握生活中的典型场面,在一个个生活的片段里,处于进退两难中的主人公必须面对抉择,这不仅能集中刻画人物心理,也能充分展示生活中固有的矛盾.再加上欧·亨利具有把情节剪裁得恰到好处的本领,因此能在很短的篇幅内达到一种思想与艺术相结合的完美效果,给人一种强烈印象.享有国际声誉的短篇小说有:《麦琪的礼物》,《警察与赞美诗》,《黄雀在后》和《最后一片常青藤叶》等等. 第三部分研究了欧·亨利短篇小说的创作主题.该部分分为四大方面. 第一方面是描写美国大城市尤其是纽约市曼哈顿区生活的作品.欧·亨利一生坎坷,常与社会低层小人物同甘共苦,对他们怀有深刻的同情,了解他们的思想感情.他的都市小说不仅反映了金元世界都市生活的真相,而且表现了作家对社会恶劣风气的愤怒与批判,以及对美好人性与人情的赞美与追求. 第二方面是描写美国西南部生活的作品.他笔下粗犷的西部显出一股豪侠之气.无论是牛仔矿工,还是强盗骗子,一个个写得栩栩如生,有声有色.他的描写美国西南部生活的作品充分体现了典型的西南部形象. 第三方面是描写拉丁美洲的作品,例如《平均海拔问题》和《双料骗子》等. 第四方面描写了"小人物".首先,欧·亨利描写了普通人的失意、贫困和美好愿望的破灭,代表作是《带家具出租的房间》和《警察与赞美诗》.其次,他歌颂了"小人物"的善良和友爱,代表作是《麦琪的礼物》.再次,他揭露和鞭挞了大资产者的贪婪和狡狯,代表作是《我们选择的道路》和《黄雀在后》.欧·亨利创作的丰富的典型形象,代表了各个阶级和各个阶层的各自不同的命运,无情地揭露了所谓的"美国精神",从不同的方面和不同的角度,反映了那个时代道德意识领域的价值观念,人性与反人性的矛盾,从而构成了欧·亨利小说的价值观. 第四部分探讨了欧·亨利的写作手法,主要研究了结构特色和语言特色. 欧·亨利的短篇小说的第一个结构特色是大量地运用了情节的反巧合.就情节的内容来看,"小人物"和普通人是欧·亨利小说中的主要描写对象,这源于他长期的生活积累,观察现实.就情节的结构而言,欧·亨利擅长从现实生活中截取一些片段构成作品的情节.从作品表现的生活面看,欧·亨利以生活的纵剖面来结构情节.从叙述者的角度来看,欧·亨利"纵"写,对情节作长线的平面叙述,尤其是描写下层社会的一些短篇,常采用第一人称,让小说中的人物自己讲故事.从总体布局方式看,欧·亨利采用灵活多变,"波浪式"的结构来展开故事情节.欧·亨利作品的情节结构连绵起伏,迂回曲折,使读者在情节的海洋中跌宕,产生一种悬念感. 欧·亨利短篇小说的第二个结构特色是令人惊讶的结尾.欧·亨利的短篇小说构思巧妙,情节离奇,尤其以出人意料的结尾而著称,这就是"欧·亨利法".这是独特的结尾方式,即在小说结尾处加大情节变化的幅度,使读者感到"出乎意外",可是仔细一想,又觉得"合乎情理".这种结尾的作用在于它照亮了人物心灵中的人情,寄托了作者的爱憎感情,引起了读者的共鸣."欧·亨利式的结尾"在美国文学中享有盛名. 欧·亨利小说的第三个特色是他的幽默. 语言幽默风趣,是欧·亨利的另一个特色.本来是很平常的事物,通过精炼的语言、生动的譬喻,和一些双关语、谐音词,顿时使它生动风趣起来.欧·亨利的语言艺术的运用,使他所写的一个个即使是情节寻常,只是结尾奇特的故事也充满了风趣,或者增加了它的深度. 首先,他的作品本身包含看幽默.《警察与赞美诗》和《婚姻手册》是较好的例子.其次,他所塑造的人物之间的比较与对照也同样包含幽默.《剪亮的灯盏》,《汽车等待的时候》和《麦琪的礼物》体现得尤为明显.再次,从《警察与赞美诗》和《婚姻手册》中,我们更能意识到他的文学语言也是极其幽默风趣的,第一人称叙述和人物之间的对话都体现了这一点.欧·亨利小说的第四个特色是讽刺.欧·亨利是一位风格独特的作家,他善于把幽默,讽刺,夸张,揶揄,矛盾和引用等修辞手法熔于一体,写出世态人情的可笑、可恶、可悲和可怜.幽默与俏皮话使人产生一种超脱现实之感,仿佛作家站在一个至高点,用俯视的、嘲讽的眼光在观察现实,描写现实,使读者感到现实生活的气息.欧·亨利小说的第五个特色是篇幅的简短和语言的简洁.欧·亨利的作品以小人物的命运表现人性的重大主题,篇幅简短紧凑而容量博大精深,写得平易亲切而感人肺腑,充分发挥了短篇小说以小见大的艺术优势,显示了欧·亨利作为世界短篇小说大师的文学天才. 总之,他的语言幽默风趣,诙谐机智,生动准确,文字简练,是举世闻名的语言大师. 第五部分是结论.这一部分总结了欧·亨利短篇小说创作的主要成就和独到之处,简要介绍了美国乃至世界文学界对他的评价,映衬出了他对世界文学的深远影响,从而体现了欧·亨利小说创作的深远的历史意义和现实意义.他的短篇小说不仅是反映美国社会生活的一面镜子,给人们以美的享受,而且还以其丰富的思想内容启迪着人们的思想,净化着人们的心灵.因此,欧·亨利那数量可观的表现了对违反人性主题的抨击和对合乎人性主题的热情歌颂的代表作不仅在美国文学史上熠熠生辉,而且将在世界文学百花园里流芳千古.

5.期刊论文于永凤.YU Yongfeng 《二十年后》只能"含泪"无法"微笑"——由《二十年后》看欧·亨利短篇小说对社会的批判内涵 -沈阳大学学报2006,18(6)

解析了小说<二十年后>的思想内涵及社会价值,认为欧·亨利的短篇小说在"含泪的微笑"背后,表达出对资本主义上升时期的美国社会的深刻批判.

6.期刊论文陈颖生动的人物、幽默的语言、意外的结局 --浅析欧·亨利短篇小说的艺术特色 -牡丹江师范学院学报(哲学社会科学版)2003(1)

欧@亨利,美国最杰出的短篇小说家,其作品有"美国生活的百科全书"之誉,在世界文学史上占有重要地位.本文通过对其短篇小说巧妙的构思、夸幽默的文笔、生动的人物形象的赏析,意在领略他的艺术特色和独特风格.

7.期刊论文温钟颖.WEN Zhong-ying 欧·亨利短篇小说的故事情节及主题思想 -信阳农业高等专科学校学报2007,17(1)

欧·亨利是一位具有强烈的社会责任感和同情心的美国优秀短篇小说家,他生活的社会背景及其个人生平成就了他作品的独特风格:讽刺"大人物"的丑陋面目,描绘"小人物"悲喜交织的热闹生活,揭露欲哭无泪的悲惨世界.

8.期刊论文李玲欧·亨利短篇小说赏析 -安徽文学（文教研究）2006(10)

欧·亨利的短篇小说以其独特的艺术魅力一直深受世人的喜爱.欧·亨利作品的主人公大多是小市民,取材于一个个小的场景;欧·亨利式的结尾令人回味无穷,拍案叫绝.

9.期刊论文张蕾含泪的微笑——欧·亨利写作特点初探 -电影文学2008(10)

欧·亨利是美国现代短篇小说的奠基人,其作品幽默生动,布局精巧."以小见大"的反衬式的创作风格与他所擅长运用的以剧情和人物的反差来映衬出"笑中含泪"艺术效果的完美统一,是他创作成就之所在.他幽默的天性和讽刺笔法的巧妙结合,使得他的作品别具发人深省的艺术魅力.其著名的欧·亨利式结局,使前面的情节有了新的意义,从而给人留下持久而又深刻的回味.

10.期刊论文樊林.FAN Lin "欧·亨利式的结尾"表现手法浅析 -西安建筑科技大学学报（社会科学版）2005,24(4)

"欧·亨利式的结尾"以其出人意料的结局,享誉世界文坛.通过对欧氏短篇小说各种不同类型结尾的表现手法作一详细分析,并从该角度探讨和揭示其作品独特的艺术魅力和巧妙的写作风格,以期对欧·亨利小说的内涵有更准确的把握."欧亨利式的结尾"构思巧妙,这种巧和集中地反映了美国当时社会现实严重不合理现象.

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