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3.1 Linguistic Irony 7
3.2 Irony in Topics & Endings 8
3.3 Irony in Main Ideas 9
4 Reasons for O.Henry’s Humor and Irony11
4.1 Life Experience of the Author 11
4.2 Social Background 12
5 Main purposes of O.Henry’s Humor and Irony13
5.1 Reflecting the Reality of the Society 13
5.2 Reflecting Human Virtues 14
5.3 In Praise of the Truth, the Good and the Beautiful 15
6 Conclusion 16
Bibliography17
1 Introduction
William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O.Henry, was an American writer. He was the short story master in the 20th century of America. Also he is the founder of American contemporary short stories. O.Henry is good at capturing the common points to shape the roles in his stories. The distinctive conception, succinct writing, humorous and ironic writing styles make contributions to his unique artistic charm. His most famous works were those that reflected the pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy of American ordinary people such as clerks, waitresses, policemen and so on. Thus, his stories were honored as “Humorous Encyclopedia of American Life” (Forman, 1908).
He is good at reflecting the American life via his stories especially people’s life in New York. His works are full of new conception, humorous language and the ending of his stories always make people feel confused. However, in his stories, we always can find some characters whose family is undergoing hardship and life is difficult and poor. However, these characters have the same feature that they will try their best to help other people no matter their relative or the people they never meet before.O.Henry is sympathetic with the poor so in many of his works, he denounces human defeats and highly praises the human virtues. Humanity is the most famous and eternal theme among all his literature works. O.Henry wants to arouse people’s sympathy and bright sides and encourage people to show their kind aspects to save the world.
O.Henry shows his writing styles in different ways such as simile, metaphor and exaggeration. The most meaningful and attractive characteristic of O.Henry’s works is the humor and irony writing styles. His famous works such as The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, The last leave and The Reason of the Red Chief are the best examples of this writing style. We found that Henry James Forman, one of the editorial staff of the North American Review, said, “He writes with the skill of Maupassant, and with a humor that Maupassant never dreamed of” (Forman, 1908). We all know that humor is one of the traditions in American literature and O.Henry not only inherit this tradition but also he develop this tradition. What’s more, he combine the irony with humor to achieve the literature effects.
This essay focus on the discussion of the writing styles of humor and irony and the purpose of this writing style. In most of the author’s short stories, he uses the plot of coincidence to create the humorous and ironic effect. The real intention is to reflect the real social phenomenon in America. Maybe when readers read his novels, they feel that it is full of humor but they never smile. It is called the tearful smile in all of his works. This kind of tearful smile deepens his works’ social significance with long artistic charm.