The Gift of the Magi
Ashlee Stevens
ENG125: Introduction to Literature
Amy Sloan
September 10, 2012
Ashford University

The Gift of the Magi The Gift of the Magi was about sacrificial love. The story explained how important it is to be willing to sacrifice for the one that you love. No matter what the circumstance, if a person can unselfishly give of themselves for another, they can experience life in a whole new way. Many people give what is not important to them and makes no difference. I think the term “it’s the thought that counts” has been used to justify just giving anything to a person without actually put your heart and soul into the gift you are giving. O. Henry uses The Gift of the Magi to demonstrate the importance of expressing your love through sacrifice. O. Henry uses setting throughout the whole story to show the reader how little Mr. and Mrs. James Dillingham Young have. In the first paragraph the reader already has a sense of how meager their living conditions are when Della has counted the one dollar and eighty-seven cents three times. He explains the lengths she went through to save that much money, and sixty cents of it was all pennies. He does not immediately describe their way of living all at once. He draws it out through the whole story so the reader never loses the sense of the struggle that Della and James are living in. In the second paragraph he says that she flopped down on the “shabby little couch”. (Clugston, 2010) He tells the reader that the flat was only eight dollars per week, which was probably still very expensive for them living on twenty dollars per week. It is also mentioned that they were not always used to living this way. James received an income reduction from thirty dollars per week to twenty dollars per week. Later in the short story when Della leaves the house O. Henry mentions that she put on an “old brown jacket” and an “old brown hat.” (Clugston, 2010) Even later in the story when James returns home he O. Henry takes this opportunity to add in that “he needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.” (Clugston, 2010) I was also put under the impression that the two of them didn’t have many other family and friends or loved ones. It seemed as if they only had each other. They had “a letter box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.” (Clugston, 2010) They don’t send or receive letter or receive visits from anyone. O. Henry uses metaphor to connect the reader to the story with emotion. Before Della stands in the mirror she looks out of the window. She “looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.” (Clugston, 2010) The cat and the fence may very well have been gray but the backyard certainly was not really colored gray. This puts the reader in a somber mood. Gray is hardly the color of happiness or excitement.
He also uses metaphor to describe to the reader how great the sacrifices would be for both James and Della. He tells us how fond they are of Della’s hair and James’ watch. “There were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch. . . The other was Della’s hair.” (Clugston, 2010) Out of everything they owned his watch and her hair were the most valuable to them. He proceeds to compare Della’s hair to the queen of Sheba’s jewels and gifts and James’ watch to King Solomon’s treasures. From the outside looking in, no one else probably would have been as fond of these two possessions as they were. Her hair and his watch were important to them just the same. When Della stands in the mirror to make the decision to sell her hair and she is in the mirror a picture is painted of how grand her hair really is. Her hair “fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.” (Clugston, 2010) O. Henry also referred to her hair as a cascade when she released in the hair goods store. After selling her hair it reads that “the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.” (Clugston, 2010) I got the impression that she was happy but rushing and in a frenzy to find a gift. When he says that she ransacked the stores I got an image of her literally tearing stores apart looking for a gift for James. I knew this was an exaggeration so the reader could get a picture of how desperate she was to find the correct gift for him. When Della gets back to their flat she began to worry about how Jim would react to her short hair. She picks up the curling iron to repair the “ravages made by generosity added to love.” (Clugston, 2010) Her hair was not literally ravaged by generosity and love. This is a metaphor describing the sacrifice that her generosity and love prompted her to make for Jim. Throughout the short story O. Henry also expresses the love that James and Della have for each other. Della doesn’t just cry when she realizes that she doesn’t have the money for a great gift for James, she howls. She greatly hugs him when he returns home and gets to his flat. After cutting her hair and receiving the money to buy his gift she was so ecstatic that her sacrifice seemed to not bother her until she got home and looked at it, and even then she was only worried that James wouldn’t like her without hair. She pleaded with him to be good to her because in her own words “I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present.” (Clugston, 2010) She is only briefly sad when she realizes that she has no hair to wear the beautiful combs that James has bought her. Her sadness subsides when gives him his gift to open. She is so happy to have given him such a wonderful gift for his watch. We then see that James loves her just as much as she loves him because he has sacrificed his watch in order to give her the combs. Even though James and Della have sacrificed the things they value the most, they did it for each other. They did it for the love they have for each other and the need to see each other happy. They each sacrificed their most prized possessions to enhance the other’s most prized possession.
The biggest metaphor used in this short story is when O. Henry says “They are the magi.” (Clugston, 2010) This supports the theme of the story. It explains that it is not only important but wise to make sacrifices in the gifts you give the ones you love. Even if the sacrifices seem to be unwise sacrifices on the surface, they are the best ones for the heart.

References
Clugston, W.R. (2010) Journey into Literature. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Shmoop Editorial Team. (November 11, 2008).The Gift of the Magi. Retrieved September 10, 2012, from http://www.shmoop.com/gift-of-the-magi/
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. (2002, Dec 16). Sudbury Star, pp. 8-8. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/348865991?accountid=32521