Blurring Generic Boundary in the Selected Stories of O’ Henry

Abstract

This project focuses on O’Henry’s short stories which exposes O'Henry’s narrative technique.When people try to describe O'Henry’s writing style, they always use the term “smile with tears,” which implies his twisted way of thoughts and endings about every story. These stories usually end in a humorous but also a cruel kind of way. It’s absolutely useful to elevate the artistic thought in writing a thoughtful story. In this project, O'Henry's works are explained with the modes of the opening and ending are commented on with the theory of narrative modes, Henry's works with respect to the recurrent themes from the perspective of narratology. Henry uses his vocabulary containing a lot of slang words and phrases. O'Henry’s writings take the speech patterns and rhythms of the common folk and add vivacity, variety, and interest on his stories. The thesis analyzes seven of his stories namely; ”The last Leaf”, “The Gift of Magi”, “After twenty years”, “Schools and Schools”, “The Skylight Room”, “An Unknown Romance”, “A Chaparral Christmas Gift" and "The Dual".