The Gift Of The Magi Essay
In the story The Gift of the Magi, the main character Della cuts her hair, which is her prized possession, to buy a fab chain for her husband Jims pocket watch. Yet Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs for her hair. In this story the main literary element is theme, which is impacted by character, conflict, irony, setting, point of view, tone and mood.
The theme in this story is, love is a better gift than any item. The setting of the story impacts the theme because Della and Jim live in a poor community and have to make sacrifices out of love for each other, which shows their selfless character. This makes the reader feel warmth and love because of how loving Della and Jim are toward one another.
The setting of the story is in a poor area in New York City in the 1900s around Christmas time, so Della wants to get Jim a nice gift for Christmas but she doesnt have enough money. This creates an upsetting but somehow warming tone, creating the mood of sorrow that the reader feels for Della and Jim. This also creates a person verses society conflict because Della and Jim live in a poor society. This makes Della cut her hair, which is a person verses self conflict. Conflict is also impacted by irony because Della sold her hair to buy a fab chain for Jims watch, which he sold to buy Della a set of combs for her hair creating a person verses person conflict.
The irony of this story occurs in the end because Della and Jim are exchanging Christmas gifts with one another and they realize neither can use the gift because they gave up the prized possession for the one they love, which shows the theme. This irony is also impacted by the point of view, which is third person limited and this type of point of view restricts you from the thoughts of everyone but Della. This creates irony because if you knew Jims gift for Della than the ending wouldnt be a surprise.
In the story The Gift of the Magi Della and Jim get gifts for each other, but neither of them can use the gift because they sold the items their gifts were to be used for to buy the gifts. The main literary element of the story is theme. Theme is impacted by many other literary elements in the story like character, conflict, irony, setting, point of view, tone, and mood.
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