以[最后一片叶子]为例论欧·亨利的创作风格

On O’Henry’s Writing Style Exemplified by

The Last Leaf

By

Xin Kesi

Supervisor: Lecturer Wang Hao

A Thesis Submitted to School of Foreign Languages

Of Handan College in Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirement for the Degree

Of Bachelor of Arts

Handan, China

May, 2010

郑重声明

本人的毕业论文是在指导教师王颢的指导下独立撰写完成的。如有剽窃、抄袭、造假等违反学术道德、学术规范和侵权的行为，本人愿意承担由此产生的各种后果，直至法律责任，并愿意通过网络接受公众的监督。特此郑重声明。

毕业论文作者：

年 月 日

Acknowledgements

I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all those who have offered me help in my thesis writing. First of all, my thanks are particularly extended to my supervisor, Lecturer, Wang Hao, whose inspiring insights, generous encouragements, and enthusiastic instructions have facilitated me much throughout my thesis writing. Her penetrating and insightful comments afford me with inspiring source. She has been in constant concern about my paper, spared no pains to entertain my thesis draft. She also teaches me the format of the thesis. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to the Foreign Language Department of Handan College as well as all my teachers. Thanks to their instructive guidance and comprehensive education during the four years‟ schooling, I can acquire the opportunity to further study English. And I want to thank my parents. It is them who brought me up and give me financial support through my college life. Finally, my great gratitude also goes to all my friends, especially my roommates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.

Abstract

O‟Henry is one of the most famous American short story writers in the early 20th century. In his legendary life, he offers the innumerable artistic stories for the readers by his uniquely “O‟Henry technique”. “O‟Henry technique” is a big magic weapon by which this artistic master makes his great success, also leaves the readers a huge wealth. The Last Leaf is one of the masterpieces of O‟Henry. This short story tells a story about three poor artists. The bittersweet story involves Johnsy, a young artist who is suffering from a severe case of pneumonia and has lost her will to live, though Sue gives her close care. However, Behrman provides the ultimate gift to Johnsy, and in doing so, saves her life, but loses his own life.

This thesis analyzes the writing styles of this short story through three levels: language, structure and characterization. Chapter One studies the language features, showing O‟Henry is a master of language. Chapter Two analyzes the structure features from two parts: the unexpected ending and “plot blank”. Chapter Three discusses the characterization features from the psychological portrayal, behavior portrayal, language portrayal and appearance portrayal. By doing this, this thesis shows O‟Henry‟s unique role in the literary world.

Key Words: style language structure characterization

摘 要

欧·亨利是20世纪初美国最著名的短篇小说家之一。在他传奇的一生中，欧·亨利运用他独特的“欧·亨利手法”为读者奉献了无数的力作。而“欧·亨利手法”则是这位艺术大师赖以成功的一大法宝，也是他为读者留下的一笔巨大财富。《最后一片叶子》是欧·亨利众多名作之一，这篇小说讲述的是三个艺术家之间的故事。忧喜参半的乔是一个年轻的画家，她不幸患上肺炎，尽管苏竭力照料她，但她仍丧失了生的意志。 然而贝尔曼给了她一份最后的礼物，贝尔曼用自己的生命救了乔的生命。

本文从语言，结构和人物刻画三个方面分析了这篇小说的创作风格。第一部分研究它的语言特色展示了欧·亨利语言大师的风采，第二部分从出人意料的结尾和情节空白两部分分析了它的结构特色，第三部分研究它人物刻画的特色，包括心理描写，行为描写，语言描写和外貌描写。文章就是从这三方面展现欧·亨利在世界文坛中的独特地位的。

关键词：风格 语言 结构 人物刻画

Contents

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ i Abstract . ......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract (Chinese) ....................................................................................................... iii

Introduction . ...................................................................................................................1

Chapter One Language Features...............................................................................4

1.1 Clever Choice of Words .........................................................................................4

1.2 The Variety of Sentences . .......................................................................................5

Chapter Two Structure Features ...............................................................................6

2.1 O‟Henry Ending . ....................................................................................................6

2.2 Plot Blank...............................................................................................................8

Chapter Three Characterization Features ...............................................................9

3.1 Psychological Portrayal and Behavior Portrayal ...................................................9

3.2 Language Portrayal and Appearance Portrayal . ...................................................10

Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 11

Notes ..............................................................................................................................12

Bibliography .................................................................................................................13

Introduction

O‟Henry, one of the greatest writers in the short story world, who ranks with Chekhov and Maupassant, was born on September 11, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. As the initiator of contemporary short novelists, O‟Henry plays an extremely important role in the literary world especially in America. In his legendary life, O‟Henry occupied himself with many different jobs, including work in a drug store, as a ranch hand in Texas, as a licensed pharmacist, as a draftsman, and as a columnist. He has been to most parts of America, from village to big cities, and nearly experiences all the joy and the misery of the world, witnessing common people‟s living condition at various social levels, and he extremely pays attention to the little citizens‟ living condition. It is obvious that these life circumstances have embodied O‟Henry‟s characters and spirits as a writer. Characterization portrayal and the artistic image in his stories fill with the contradiction and complication.

The Last Leaf is one of O‟Henry‟s most successful short stories. It tells an impressive story among three poor and unsuccessful artists. It is a story about living. Old Behrman uses his life to save Johnsy‟s life by drawing the last leaf of the ivy in a rainstormy night.

During the first ten years after O‟Henry passed away, there raises a surge about O‟Henry in America, his prestige getting the peak. He is called “the new father of America literature”. And now O‟Henry still attracts scholars home and aboard.

Liu Wencui‟s “A Study of O‟Henry‟s Writing Methods in his Short Story „The Gift of Magi‟” published in Dong Jiang Journal in 2001, explores O‟Henry‟s peculiar writing methods used in “The Gift of Magi” by addressing the distinctive title which combines metaphorical meaning, the living language with proper wording and the reasonable and surprising ending.

Then Wen Jiexia contrasts and compares O‟Henry with Maupassant in “A Comparative Study between Maupassant and O‟Henry in Short Story Layout”, which is published in Journal of Zhao Qing University. Both O‟Henry and Maupassant are skillful at short story writing and famous for their ingenious and exquisite layouts. While each of them has his characteristic and style in plot, ending and narration. By doing so, Wen Jiexia shows the ingenious writing skills of O‟Henry

which comes from everyday life experiences. O‟Henry writes ordinary scenes of life, but he can extract vivid and uniq ue plots from common scenes. O‟Henry tells his stories in ordinary way, with an objective tone and always inserts into some subjective comments, while Maupassant is objective, real and natural. O‟Henry criticizes the social reality by displaying the macros copic appearance with microscopic reflection.

Moreover, in “Narrative Analysis of O‟Henry‟s Writing Technique” Zhang Wenhua explains the theme on human virtues in O‟Henry‟s works with the binary opposition in the structuralize theory. The writer comments on the modes of the opening and ending with the theory of narrative modes. The typical surprising ending in O‟Henry‟s works is analyzed with the technique of defamiliarization. By doing so, Zhang Wenhua presents the unique characteristics of O‟Henry‟s work s with regard to the narrative analysis. Firstly, the author gives an analysis of O‟Henry‟s stories from the perspective of structuralized narratalogy. Secondly, he explores the four main narrative modes of the opening and ending in O‟Henry‟s works with th e theory of narratalogy. Thirdly, focusing on narrative technique, he elucidates that the employment of the technique of defamiliarization.

In addition, in J. Xi’an Univ. of Arch. & Tech. (Social Science Edition) Fan Lin makes some comments on O‟Henry‟s artistic characteristics in “Ingenious Contrast and Frightening Shocks ——On the Artistic Characteristics of O‟Henry‟s Short Novels”. Through the analysis of contrasts, it discloses the great artistic effects. Firstly, through writing little citizens and ordinary cases, O‟Henry‟s storie s display important current affairs in America. Secondly, O‟Henry shows his sympathy for the social underdogs, his eulogy of human virtues and exposure of human defects are highlighted as the keynotes. Then, O‟Henry uses light tone to elucidate serious tragedy. Finally, though the story has no political color, it is full of criticism to police.

Furthermore, in “Modernistic Elements in O‟Henry‟s Short Stories”, Han Rong explains why O‟Henry exploits modernistic elements in his writings. On one hand, O‟Henry has the same outlook on the world and life with that of the modernists, so he exploits unconsciously modernistic elements in his works . On the other hand, O‟Henry intends to use modernistic elements in his writing in order to please editors and publishers. This thesis illustrates with a lot of examples the modernistic elements in O‟Henry‟s works in eight aspects， which are surrealism, impressionism, the absurd, avant-gardism, magic realism, black humor, symbolism and other modernistic

techniques such as metaphor and blank memory. With all these elements, the author proves that O‟Henry is qualified to be ranked as a pioneering modernistic writer.

The domestic scholars have studied O‟Henry stories quite comprehensively, but the research to the opening of his story is very few. So Hu Changyu promotes “the opening” in “An Initial Approach to the Writing Methods in O‟Henry‟s Novels”. In this thesis, Hu Changyu introduces O‟Henry‟s extremely diverse kinds of openings, which occupy the extremely important position in his works. Certainly, O‟Henry‟s skill to deal with the ending is already very well. And the author points out that it is necessary to look at the whole, because the success of his ending is based on the whole text. Then he addresses the language features. At last, he puts O‟Henry, Chekhov and Maupassant together to make a comparison.

And Zhang Xiujuan analyzes O‟Henry‟s three masterpieces, i.e. The Furnishes Room, While the Auto Waits , and The Cop and the Anthem in her Master degree paper ——“A Functional Stylistic Analysis of O‟Henry”. Firstly, this thesis analyzes the three meanings of context of situation, providing a general understanding of the content and background of each story. Then it makes a detailed analysis from the following aspects: cohesion system, transitivity system, and mood system. The author discovers that O‟Henry is especially concerned about the “little citizens”. O ‟Henry ‟s stories are nearly all narrated from the third-person perspective. Further, O‟Henry tends to use the definite article “the” to instead the indefinite article “a” in the titles. By doing so, O‟Henry wants to put readers inside, as one is assumed to have had the same knowledge of the matter of the story with the narrator.

The aboard scholar s also have great interests in O‟Henry. Among those scholars, Henry James Forman has great respect for O‟Henry. According to him, O‟Henry has brought new life into the short stories and Forman points out that O‟Henry is gifted with a flashing wit, abundant humor, and quick observation. In Forman‟s opinion, O‟Henry treated his materials with the skill of Maupassant, and a humor Maupassant never dreamed of.

In “O‟Henry: Some Thoughts on the Urban O‟Henry Romanticist”, Jesse F. Knight presents his views on O‟Henry with regard to the romantic legacy, the myth of the hack, the issue of craftsmanship, form and content, appearance and reality, the spirit of America, the romantic ethos and the city.

O‟Henry‟s unique writing styles -vivid plots, frequent coincidences, humorous language,

unexpected ending and moving theme impress readers deeply. In this thesis, the author try to account for O‟Henry‟s writing style reflected in The Last Leaf . By discussing the language, structure and characterization portrayal, this thesis shows the concise and lifesome language, the ingenious arrangement and lively characters of this short story of O‟Henry.

Chapter One Language Features

O‟Henry‟s language has distinctive features that are humor, popular and easy-to-understand, and O‟Henry expresses his unique design and shows his talent in story writing by using proper wording. In The Last Leaf, O‟Henry chooses exact, laconic, vivid words and various sentences to describe the background and scene of this short story, to make a psychological portrayal of the characters to be vivid and charming. By doing this, O‟Henry wants to put the readers inside, as one is assumed to have shared a common prior knowledge of the matter of the story with narrator.

1.1 Clever Choice of Words

At the beginning paragraph of The Last Leaf, O‟Henry uses some material and exact words to attract the readers to a maze where the characters live and where the story happen. “angles” “curves” “cross”——all these words outstand the complex of the terrain of this area. O‟Henry uses “colony”, just one word, to let the readers realize that people who live there are unwealthy and unsuccessful in their career. This applies contrast with the end: people live in that place can also have masterpiece!

William Shakespeare has a wisdom, “Brevity is the soul of wit”, that is to use the least words to express a great amount of information, to use short and common but complex words, to leave out the redundant and vague words. In the sentence, “Then she swaggered into Johnsy‟s room with her drawing board, whistling jazz.” 1, “swaggered” is more concise and to the point than “walk in a self-satisfactory”. And this behavior shows that Sue would not let Johnsy worry. To make the story more vivid and attractive, O‟Henry uses a series of rhetoric.