“Smile with Tears”—— An Interpretation of O. Henry’s Short Stories

Abstract

As one of the greatest short-story novelists in the world, O. Henry is a critical realistic author, also one of the world’s three major short masters, together with Chekov and Maupassant. His writing style is appreciated by numerous readers, especially for the twist plot and the surprising ending with the feature of “smile with tears”. In language, O. Henry uses many rhetoric tactics to achieve the effect of making the stories more vivid and humorous, such as exaggeration, metaphor, and simile and so on. His writing materials are from his own life experiences, that each story is a reflection of the society then, and he always sympathizes with the poor, criticizes and satirizes the capitalists even the common insignificants who have the valuable humanity. Through the analysis of O. Henry’s representative novels, it has expounded the humanistic spirit and optimistic expectation of human kindness contained in his works, which also shows love and kindness are the ultimate belief and the eternal chapter praised by all human beings. Therefore, it has become a major stylistic feature of O. Henry’s novels to show the characters’ psychology by depicting the emotional motivation, which is also the main line and key to our analysis of his works. Moreover, his unique writing styles influence following authors in the field of literature, therefore, his story is known as the “encyclopedia of American life”.