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Rhetorical Devices In O. Henry's The Gift Of The Magi

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Christmas is a wonderful time of year filled with happiness, love, and gifts. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry starts out in this wonderful season on the eve of Christmas. Della and Jim Dillingham Young are your average young couple, poor in money but rich in love. Just as anyone would during Christmas time, Della spends most of the novel hunting for the perfect gift for her beloved as he does the same for her. O. Henry establishes his character through the use of setting, tone, and allusion in “The Gift of the Magi”.
The setting is key to every story. It is the basis for everything that happens within a story and creates the first visual a reader imagines. O. Henry exemplifies this rhetorical device by depicting a “drab flat in a gray city on Christmas Eve” (Analysis: Setting 1). Immediately the reader can infer two things: the couple is poor and it is a holiday season. The authors use of describing the grayness of the city reflects a sense of the uncaring world around them, whereas inside the home the atmosphere between Della and Jim is sweet and loving. An example of this great romance would be, “He enfolded his Della” (O. Henry 3.) where he hugged her because she seemed distraught. …show more content…

Henry uses in his story is the element of tone. He goes back and forth from being a narrator to being more of a sympathetic grandfather (Analysis: Tone 1.). It almost feels as though throughout the novel, the narrator is giving advice through his characters and teaching them life lessons. When the author states, “Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating” (O. Henry 1.) he is referring to how life is not fair. Sometimes you will have ups, or “happiness” and “smiles”, but sometimes you will have lows, or “sobs” and “sniffles”, but either way, you have to keep moving through the bad times to get to the good. Through his tone, he revels much about his character as a

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