Book Review

The collection of o Henry's short stories was written by o Henry, known as the maupassant of America. He is recognized by readers around the world as the best short story writer of the early 20th century.   The English bibliography (my reading at love onion app) includes five short stories: "The gift of the magi" ,"The police and the hymn", "A Walk in Amnesia" ,"Tildy’s Moment" and "The Memento."   “The gift of the magi” tells a wonderful love story. The wife sold her beautiful hair to buy her husband a platinum watch chain for Christmas. The husband, for the same reason, sold his ancestral gold watch and bought his wife a set of combs. Although each other's gifts lost their usefulness, the affection they gained from them was priceless.   "The police and the hymn" about a tramp want to escape into prison to avoid suffering from winter hunger and cold, several times by example but failed, and when he stood in front of the church, listening to the hymns, determined to be a serious man from then on was framed into prison, the story ending, make people not to know whether to laugh or cry.   "A Walk in Amnesia" tells the story of a lawyer named elvin belford, in order to regain freedom and happiness and pretend to have amnesia, but finally reluctantly chose to "suddenly better" to restore the memory of the story.   "Tildy’s Moment" tell a story that Tildy is jealous of Irene, a beautiful waitress who is also at the restaurant. One day, a drunken guest kissed the plain - looking waitress, tildy, which brightened her up. A few days later, tildy was heartbroken when a guest came to apologize that he had just had too much to drink.   "The Memento" recalls Rosalie's experience through a conversation between damand and Rosalie. She had wanted to leave the world of booze and find her own Peace. And while she briefly thought she had found a different kind of great man, Arthur turned out to be a fan of her in the audience and a big fan of her. Finally, Rosalie realized that he was no different from any other man and went back to the theater eventurally.   O Henry's short stories reveal the social evils of money being powerful and mercenary.they depict the hardships of the "little people" at the bottom of the society, praise their human beauty, and mercilessly expose and whip the "high people" and "the proud ones" for their extortion and greed. From the aspect of social life, the author selected the life scenes with great expressive force to express the style of his era with peculiar ideas and ridicule. To this day, the remarkable twist in the story's ending is still called the "O Henry ending." And it was in this unexpected way that he achieved the effect of direct impact.   It is a pleasure to read O Henrys works, one short passage at a time, without any drag. "I write for bread," he once said bluntly. However, there is nothing in his works but sadness and pain or his aversion to the world. Even behind his satirical works, people can feel his concern for the society. This does not remind me of a Chinese literary master. He is Mr. Lu Xun. Lu Xun's criticism is different from the general ideological criticism, he always focuses his criticism on people.For example, the diary of a madman satirizes China's feudal ethics and the customs of the Chinese people, but behind it is the author who has made a profound reflection on China's culture from the standpoint of thorough "revolutionary democracy", and expressed deep concern and indignation over China's and even the future of mankind. Mao Zedong once commented: "the direction of Lu Xun is the direction of the new culture of the Chinese nation."     To conclude, I would like to quote Mr. O Henry: what we become is not determined by the path we choose, but by our hearts. I hope I can overcome all the difficulties and become the person I want to be on the way of learning English.