Laughter-in-Tears—The-Pathetic-Fate-of-O.-Henry’s-Characters英语毕业论文毕业论文.docx

Laughter in Tears—The Pathetic Fate of O. Henry’s Characters
摘要：批评家对作为一名短篇小说大师的欧·亨利作品的评论主要集中在其人性的主题，生动的情节，频繁的巧合，出人意料的结尾以及幽默的语言等方面。本文重点研究欧·亨利作品中的“笑中带泪”这一写作手法，通过分析其作品的主题与语言特征，结合欧·亨利的真实人生经历来分析其采用此种写作手法以及其笔下人物悲剧命运的原因。
关键词：欧·亨利；写作手法；人性主题

Abstract: As a master of the short story, critics comment on O • Henry’s works mainly focused on the theme of humanity, respect vivid plot, frequent coincidence, humor and unexpected ending language. This paper focuses on O • Henry Works’ writing style of “laughter in tears”, by analyzing the theme and language features in his work, combined with the O • Henry's real life experiences to analyze the use of such techniques and the cause of the pathetic fate of characters.
Keyword: O • Henry; Writing techniques; Theme of humanity

1、 Introduction
O. Henry, as the famous American short novelist in 20th and the originator of American modern short novel, has been regarded as one of three masters of short novels with French Maupassant and Russian Chekhov. When still young, he focused all his mind to be a painter, while under the encouragement of his wife, he began to work. Later, he got into prison due to the accounts problems when he was working in the bank. Then, he published a great deal of short novels which raised wide attention. He wrote nearly 300 short novels and a novel. His works are featured with the expressing American middle and lower class life, humorous languages and surprised end.
1.1 O. Henry’s Life
O. Henry (1862—1910), whose original name was William Sydney Porter, was one of the three most famous short story writers in the world and the founders of American modern short story. In order to carry forward the fine tradition of O. Henry’s works, the O. Henry Memorial Award has been presented since 1918 for the best short stories published every year. O. Henry is a legendary person whose life is filled with twists and turns. In 1962, he was born in a small town named Greensboso, North Carolina, the United States. His father was a doctor, and his mother who was gifted with literature died when he was only three years old.
Then O. Henry moved to his grandma’s with his father and spent his childhood in Aunt Lina’s private school. There he learnt writing, drawing. At the same time, he read lots of famous Greek, Roman and English works. Thus, his interest in literature was cultivated for the first time. However, due to economic reasons, O. Henry had to work as an apprentice in his uncle’s drugstore when he was only 15 years old. In the drugstore, he met people of various kinds, showed his talent in caricature and humor, and collected valuable writing materials for his later writing career. Some of his famous works as Let Me Feel Your Pulse(1911), The Enchanted Kiss(1909) and The Marionettes(1920) all benefited from his apprentice experience. Two years later, with the help of his father’s friend, O. Henry went to Texas State in the west to improve his delicate health condition. There he worked in a ranch as a cowboy for two years.
During those two years, he experienced not only all kinds of humanity and social contradictions in West Development but also a wide, clear and genuine life style differing greatly from the East. He described this in such story as Hygeia at the Solito(1904). In 1884, O. Henry moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked in the general land office. And then he married Athol Estes and spent a short but happy marriage life of four years. In 1891, he began to work as a clerk in First National Bank of Austin. In 1894 he embarked on a literary venture and transformed it into a humorous publication— The Rolling Stone(1894). Although it turned to be a financial failure, The Rolling Stone set a good foundation for his later writing career. Unfortunately, in the same year he was accused of embezzlement by First National Bank of Austin. Later, he abandoned his wife and daughter and fled to Honduras in Latin America.
In July of 1897, he was imprisoned when coming home to visit his dying wife and was sentenced to a five-year imprisonment in 1898. Because of his excellent manifestation, he was released ahead of time in 1901. In the prison, he published his first short story—Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking(1899) with the pseudonym O. Henry. Getting out of prison in 1901, O. Henry settled down in New York and took writing as his career.

1.2 O. Henry’s Works
During his short life, O. Henry wrote about 300 short stories and a novel. All these works can be divided into three kinds according to their writing subjects. One is about the American western life, one is about the life in American big city, and the rest is about the Latin-American life, which all related closely to O. Henry’s life experience.
O. Henry’s novels are easily to be understood by readers. And most of his works are about the real world and human relations with a strong and thick American style. Unlike the characters in other works being complicated, O. Henry’s characters are simple in mind and pure in action. What’s more, his works are mostly about the rich and the poor. On one hand, America is a civilian society without born noble class, so the question of rich and poor becomes the major contradiction. On the other hand, America was in the “glided age”, and people formed a strong desire to make money, no matter the money is legal or not. Thus, characters in O. Henry’s works live in such a money-dominated world. What they do and how they feel all have to do with money.
In his works, O. Henry presents the panorama of the American people to readers with ironic and humorous tone. O. Henry is sympathetic with the poor and he praises the human virtues and denounces human defeats. Humanity, as the eternal theme of O. Henry’s works, endows his works with perpetual artistic charm. Human being has many virtues from ancient times to the present. They are kind, brave, honest, hard-working, polite, thrifty, generous, and hospitable and so on. Some people pay a great deal in order to maintain these virtues, they sacrifice their own happiness even life for the lofty to love and friendship. Some help others without asking for rewards and regard it as a pleasure. Some give up their own treasure and chance to others. Those characters bring love and fine things to the world and are the ones who endow the world with light and hope. However, human beings have many defects. Sometimes they are lazy, rapacious, gluttonous, officious, vain, arrogant, shameless, cowardly and impetuous They benefit themselves at the expense of others, they never show mercy and sympathy to the poor in order to make money, they realize their own aims by hook or by crook. Their evil deeds make the world vicious. By exposing the human defects and the dark sides of the world, O. Henry wants to awaken people’s conscience and deepest desire for all good things so that people can use their efforts to save and cleanse the whole world. While the virtue and evil in O. Henry’s works are not distinguished clearly and entirely. There is a middle area between virtue and evil, and people have the chance and possibility to be sober by conscience and turn over a new leaf.
The most typical feature of O. Henry’s works is “a surprised end”. The original plot turns to a clear directions, but the end is surprised and shocked. In general, such end is always reassuring. Even the end may be pathetic, there is also a bright spot, which is “laughter in tears”.

1.3 Literature Review
Regarded as a master of short stories, O. Henry arouses great interest from critics ten years after his death. The famous critic Stephen, Leacock says in the preface of O. Henry’s The Voice of the City (1908) that “The time is coming, let’s hope, when the whole English-speaking world will recognize in O. Henry one of the greatest masters of modern fiction” (O. Henry, 1908: Preface). He believes that O. Henry owns the technique of Maupassant, but exceeds Maupassant in humor. Either at home or abroad, critics comment on O. Henry and his works mainly with respect to the themes of humanity, vivid plots, frequent coincidences, surprising ending and humorous language.
Henry James Forman concerns mainly on the humanity themes of O. Henry’s works: “Gifted as he is with a flashing wit, abundant humor, and quick observation, no subject has terrors for him. If it be too much to say, in the old phrase, that nothing human is alien to him, at least the larger part of humanity is his domain” (Current-Garcia, 1993:158-159).
Stephen Leacock pays more attention to the design of plots, coincidences, suspense and surprising ending. In “The Amazing Genius of O. Henry” (1916), he puts forward his opinion. Still harder is it to try to show the amazing genius of O. Henry as a “plot maker”, as a designer of incident. No one better than he can hold the reader in suspense, more than that, the reader scarcely knows that he is “suspended”, until at the very close of the story. O. Henry, so to speak, turns on the lights and the whole tale is revealed as an entirety. (Leacock, 1916:249)
St. John Adcock has more interest in O. Henry’s language. He presents his opinion in “O. Henry: An English View” (1917): He has none of the conscious stylist’s elaborate little tricks with words, for he is a master of language and not its slave……He seems to go as he pleases, writing apparently just whatever words happen to be in the ink, yet all the while he is getting hold of his reader’s interest; subtly shaping his narrative with a story-teller’s unerring instinct, generally allowing you no glimpse of its culminating point until you are right on it.(Adcock, 1917:202-203)
In China, the only monographic book on O. Henry is Ruan Wenling’s Going in a Maze—the Artistic World in O. Henry (1997). It focuses on three research aspects of the writer, the works and the art. Professor Ruan introduces O. Henry’s life thoroughly, comments most of O. Henry’s works creatively, and makes it a valuable book for research into O. Henry and his works. Moreover, there are several master theses and around one hundred articles published in periodicals. Similarly, most of these theses and articles limit their discussions to the humanity themes, flexible plot arrangements and humorous language, which make up what is called “O. Henry’s Technique”. However, what will be presented in the present thesis are the narrative strategies in O. Henry’s short stories, which have ever been discussed scarcely.

2、 Laughter in Tears
O. Henry wrote and published around 300 short novels which has attracted readers’ mind with the unique styles and caused a great influence in literary field. O. Henry was good at smelting the plots and designing the stories with a simple and delicate writing dramatically. Through design suspense and place contradictions, O. Henry depicted a complicated and intricate image in his works. What makes people impressed and surprised is the end of a work, which is known as “laughter in tears”. And this feature has reflected in many of his works, like The Gift of The Magi, A Service of Love, The Cop and the Anthem, The Furnished Room.
2.1 The Origin
There are two kinds of humor, one of the white humor which can makes people laugh even after they finish the work, the other is black humor, also called “laughter in tears”, which makes people cry after laughter. And this is the feature of O. Henry’s works.
Black humor has originated in America in 1960th, and set the ideological basis with existential philosophy, and gained a rapid development as a modern literary. As an aesthetic form, black humor belongs to comedy, but an kind of absurd comedy with tragic feeling. It is related to the turbulent America in 9160th. The contradiction of ridiculous and absurd things in contemporary capitalist society and the comic is the true reflection of social life at that time, instead of being fabricated by writers’ subjective thoughts. Although writers have criticized all authorities including the rule class, and their reflection has the certain social meaning and cognitive value, they still mention that it is hard to change the social environment in a short time. Thus, a feeling of pessimism and desperation has also revealed in their works. Therefore, their works always express tease to the reality and expose the dark side with their intrinsic sharp, absurd and ridiculous styles. It is a humor combined with illusion and negation. All in all, black humor writers make a new terrible world on the basis of the real living surroundings to disclose the dark and ugly side of the real world.
However, the humor in O. Henry’s works is the typical black humor in comedic novel, which makes people laugh and think at the same time. It has put on the comedic coat for tragedy. Thus, O. Henry’s works win the sights of readers for his novel conception, humorous words as well as shocked and surprised ending.
2.2 The Embodiment
O. Henry was skilled in expressing his feelings and thoughts and presenting the American social reality in his works with his humorous words, surprised plots and direct expressions. And all these features and techniques make a great difference to his work with the effect of “laughter in tears”.
2.2.1 Humorous Words
As a world master in short novel, O. Henry dropped out of the traditional fancy and gorgeous languages, and wrote in a simple and direct style. In his works, his adopted several figures of speech like exaggeration, pun, which made his story filled with comedic feeling as well as tragic color.
In O. Henry’s short story The Cop and the Anthem, he makes full use of the vocabulary mistake and hyperbole which not only endows figures with fresh image but also obtains definite humorous effect. It’s a concrete display of the comedic writing style and at the same time it hints at the tragic fate of the protagonist.
As O. Henry described:
But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter’s eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.
Soapy’s first “long for being arrested” plan is to eat extravagantly in a luxurious restaurant—“a roast duck is almost enough” But as he steppe into the restaurant door, the head waiter’s eyes fall upon his “decadent shoes”. Decadent is always used to describe life style or consciousness concept. The author uses it to describe Soapy’s broken shoes and exaggerates the actuality of that broken shoe to a laughable extent. Then the author also uses the humorous remarks “turn round that roast duck’s nearly being killed fate” to indicate Soapy’s hope “to eat gratis is vanished.”
When describing Della looking herself in the mirror in The Gift of The Magi, O. Henry writing:
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person