The Gift of the Magi was published in 1905 by William Sydney Porter, also known as, O. Henry. The story is on a situational parable of the Magi, also known as the three wise men who visited Jesus carrying gifts. In " The Gift of the Magi ," the significant characters are Jim and Della, and Madame Sofronie as a minor character. This story is full of drama and evident mutual love is shown by self-sacrifice from both the wife and husband, Della and Jim. Unselfish love is the center of this piece, shown by how the wife and husband sell what they have and hold to so dearly to afford the other a Christmas gift. Della sells her beautiful long hair for twenty dollars to purchase Jim, her husband, a chain for holding his watch. Jim, on the other hand, sells the watch that he inherited from the grandfather to get Della, his wife, expensive combs made of pure tortoiseshell (Wilson, 1997) . In this story, the setting takes place at Della and Jim's house, Madame Sofronie's and the store where Della got her chain during Christmas eve. We noticed that Della was confused about what she was going to buy for Jim's Christmas present, which was the following day? Finally, they met and talked about the presents.
In this story, three major themes come up, and they include poverty, generosity, and love. The subject of love is portrayed when Della tells Jim that she could not have lived through Christmas without giving him a gift yet in the real sense, the gifts didn’t matter. Also, Della and Jim give each other the best of all possible gifts, love (Cummings, 2006). As a reader, we can borrow from Della and Jim that there must be more in a marriage than we perceive, which is referred to as sacrificial love. Lastly, the concept of poverty is also evident in this story. Within the first paragraph, we can quickly tell that the young couple is short of money but desperately wanted to buy each other Christmas gifts ( Bilal, 2012) . The climax of this story focuses on Della since its more of her story and how she hopes Jim would still love her despite losing her hair. As a reader, I thought he would not like her but turns out he also sacrificed his watch for her.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
In conclusion, the story is being narrated in a third person and mostly focuses on Della. The narrator zooms out of the story to talk about general pronouncements that are out of the story's characters. This story is also full of symbolism outright from the topic. The gifts are symbolic, the combs were very expensive, but their external value diminished because Della had cut her hair, but the fact that Jim gave them, illustrates that they were precious ( Kalelioğlu, 2018) . The narrator concludes that the couple was way wiser than the magi' wise men' because they showed a good sense of judgment and understanding. The great lesson we can ultimately learn is that their love for each other is more than all the material possessions money can buy and that is sacrificial love.
References
Bilal, H. A. (2012). Discourse analysis of the gift of the magi. Academic Research International , 2 (1).
Cummings, M. J. (2006). The theme of The Gift of the Magi . Retrieved from www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/OHenry.html#Theme
Kalelioğlu, M. (2018). Multidisciplinary approach to the texts: Semiotic analysis of the process of meaning construction in O. Henry’s the Gift of the Magi .
Wilson, K. (1997). Short stories for students: presenting analysis, context, and criticism on commonly studied short stories. Detroit: Gale.
