The Literary Work That I Like Best
We have learned a lot of literary works that were written by different writers of different countries and periods this semester. Every literary work has its own characteristics and also is the reflection of its social reality and the author's ideas at that time. Thus, different works have different styles and also, different people has his or her own preference. As for me, the my most favorable literary work is a short story called The Cop and the Anthem that was written by O. Henry.
O. Henry was the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydeney Porter. He was one of the most famous American short story writers and he was honoured as "the father of the short story". Besides, he was also a great writer of an important period of American literature-The Literature of Realism.
Realism was the most influential movement in literature in the mid - nineteenth century. It focused on the actual word, on social conditions, on the familiar details of everyday life. It gave much influenceon Modernism in American literature. So the literary goals, techniques and principles of the modernists and realists were almost the same.
O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. The Cop and the Anthem is a December 1904 short story by O. Henry. It includes several classic elements of an O. Henry story, including a setting in New York City, an empathetic look at the state of mind a member of the lower class, and an ironic ending.
Main Story
The setting of the story an unstated day in late fall. Because the city trees' deciduous leaves are falling and there is a hint of frost in the air, the protagonist, Soapy faces the urgent necessity of finding some sort of shelter for the winter.
As with many other homeless people in the United States, Soapy is psychologically experienced in thinking of the local jail as a actual homeless shelter.Therefore,he develops a series of tactics intended to encourage the police to classify him as a criminal and arrest him.
Soapy's ploys include swindling a restaurant into serving him an expensive meal, breaking the plate-glass window of a luxury shop, repeating his eatery exploit at a humble diner, sexually harassing a young woman, pretending to be publicly intoxicated, and stealing another man's umbrella.
However, all of these attempts are quickly exposed as failures. The upper-class restaurant looks at Soapy's threadbare clothes and refuses to serve him. A police officer responds to the broken window but decides to pursue an innocent bystander. The diner refuses to have Soapy arrested, and instead has two servers throw Soapy out onto a concrete pavement.
Soapy's failures to realize his "dream" continue. The young woman, far from feeling harassed, proves to be more than ready for action. Another police officer observes Soapy impersonating a drunk and disorderly man, but assumes that the
exhibitionistic conduct is that of a Yale student celebrating their victory over "Hartford College" in football. And finally, the victim of the umbrella theft gives up the item without a struggle.
Based on these events, Soapy despairs of his goal of getting arrested and imprisoned. With the autumn sun gone and night having fallen, Soapy lingers by a small Christian church, considering his plight.
As O. Henry describes events, the small church has a working organ and a practicing organist. As Soapy listens to the church organ play an anthem, he experiences a spiritual epiphany in which he resolves to cease to be homeless, end his life as a tramp afflicted with unemployment, and regain his self-respect. Soapy recalls that a successful businessmanhad once offered him a job. Lost in a reverie, Soapy decides that on the very next day he will seek out this potential mentor and apply for employment.
As Soapy stands on the street and considers this plan for his future, however, a policeman taps him on the shoulder and asks him what he is doing. When Soapy answers “Nothing,” his fate is sealed: he has been arrested for loitering. In the magistrate’s court on the following day, he is convicted of a misdemeanor (in the courtroom, he is pronounced guilty of "vagrancy, no visible means of support"), and is sentenced to three months in Riker's Island, the New York City jail.
The Reason Why I Like It
Firstly, the plots are exceedingly clever and interesting, humor abounds and the end is surprising. The story is very easy to understand and is very interesting. And it is short enough that I can read it over soon for if a story is too long, it will makes the reader lost interest.
Secondly, it contains a great deal of slang and colloquial expressions that make the story fits in with the characters and scenes described. The language was chaste and clear.
What's more, the setting of the story has many implications and this leads people into the interesting part of it. The Cop and the Anthem has only one character who is given a name, the protagonist "Soapy." Furthermore, no last name is given. It is made clear that Soapy is homeless, a member of the substantial army of underclass men and women who had flocked to New York City during the earliest years of the twentieth century.
And also O. Henry was good at using black humour. Obviously, one of the features of this story is the application of the black humour. Black humour employs a form of humour that may be known as 'dark humour', or, if specifically relating to death, 'morbid humour.' The purpose of black humour is to make light of serious and often taboo subject matter, and some comedians use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues, thus provoking discomfort and serious thought as well as amusement in their audience. Popular themes of the genre include murder, suicide, mutilation, war, barbarism, drug abuse, terminal illness, domestic violence, insanity, nightmare,
disease, racism, disability (both physical and mental), chauvinism, corruption, and crime.
Summary
The Cop and the Anthem is one of the representative works of O. Henry's and it has some typical writing skills of his. O. Henry's stories are famous for their surprise endings, to the point that such an ending is often referred to as an "O. Henry ending." He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful and optimistic. His stories are also well known for witty narration. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early years of the 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses.
As a matter of fact, I like the author of The Cop and the Anthem more than the story itself. However, compared with other literary works, I like this story best. Fundamentally a product of O.Henry's time, this story provides one of the best examples of catching the entire flavor of an age written in the English language. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. And one of his best-known works, The Cop and the Anthem, is an exact combination of all of these.