The Buyer from Cactus City, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Movie (only the first scenes)

SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

As many others stories by O. Henry, this one, The Buyer from Cactus City, is placed in Old South settings and New York, with an exposition of the life of ordinary people, using local colours and a realistic dialogue.
The story begins with a description of Cactus City (Texas), a rich town of twenty thousand people where the important building from Navarro & Platt is located. It’s a big store full of different things you can buy.
Every year, the older partner, Navarro, is going to New York to buy new merchandises for his emporium. But this year, as he feels a little tired, he wants to stay at home. Then, he orders his junior member, called John Platt, to make the trip to the Big City, (New York) to buy for his department store goods, especially, women’s suits.
Two weeks later, Platt, a wealthy and handsome Westerner, called ironically “Mister Texas”, a ranch man who has become a businessman, arrives in New York and enters the wholesale trade from Zizzbaum & Son, located in Broadway, to purchase some things for his business. Old Zizzbaum receives Platt, who is not impressed by New York. For that reason, Zizzbaum tells his son, Abey, to show him different places of Broadway that evening.
The next day, Zizzbaum, who wants to encourage his customer in sales, calls a sophisticated model from his trade, Helen Ashley, and commands her to try on different dresses in front of Platt. The model, aware of her duty part, agrees. Immediately, he finds her very beautiful. At that moment, the narrator says: “Platt felt for the first time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him.”
Following with his plan, Zizzbaum arranges a dinner at 7:00 p.m. between John, the customer, and Helen, her employee. Now, John notices that Helen is his ideal. He is a young, rich business Westerner in love with a model. He imagines and tells her he will buy a beautiful car and a house, but she, disgustedly, replies she “has heard that before”.  For Helen, this evening is just following her working day and, frankly, she informs Platt she is only out with him to play this role, otherwise she’ll lose her job.
Platt insists and declares his love and gives her a diamond ring he has bought. Misunderstanding him, she reacts by getting angry because she believes he wants to abuse her. Immediately, she wants to leave the restaurant telling him to take her to the boarding house where she lives. There she slaps his face. But the persistent Westerner, who only wants about marrying her, increases his infatuation looking for an honest, sincere relationship and... just then a ring falls at her feet, but it isn’t the same ring: she sees that it is actually a wedding ring.
As many times in the stories of this author, the plot goes on in one direction, and just when the reader thinks they can predict the ending, finally, it turns to another different direction.
Surprise ending?  Does she change her mind because she realizes her mistake? Is there a change of reaction when she wants to know where is Cac, Carac, Caracas City?

QUESTIONS

-Do you think a mercenary marriage could be happy? And a marriage without romantic love?
-In your view, is the girl in the story, Helen, treated like an object by her boss? In your opinion, are some jobs (like models) offensive for people’s dignity?
-Helen doesn’t mind going away to live in an unknown place. What conditions you wouldn’t agree with for a marriage, or for a job?

VOCABULARY

obtain, be sneezed at, tan, shied, whirl, lay-down collar, wholesale, smuggled, crowbait, incidentally, oilily, evening gown, tulle, Don’t get fresh 

The Cop and the Anthem, by O. Henry

O. Henry at the Wikipedia: click here

The Cop and the Anthem at the wikipedia: click here

The Cop and the Anthem: review

Some academic activities (with solutions): click here

The Cop and the Anthem: audiobook

The Cop and the Anthem: short movie

Presentation

Biography

Oliver Henry, usually written O. Henry, was the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter. He started to use different pseudonyms when wanted to publish his stories while he was in prison. And as he liked O. Henry the best, he kept using it ever after, and we always speak of him as O. Henry.

He was born in 1862, so in the middle of the American Civil War or Secession War, between the slavers confederates secessionists and the yankees abolitionists unionists. His birthday was on the 11th of September, so we have to suppose that if he had known what were to happen, he would have written a story about it, because he liked the surprising ironies of life.

He was born in North Carolina, but he went to live in Texas where he graduated as a chemist (or pharmacist, as he was American, not British). He was then 19 years old.

When he was 25, he eloped with his girlfriend. They married and they had two children, a boy who died soon after his birth, and, later, a girl, Margaret.

When he was 29, he started to work in a bank, and only 3 years later he was accused of misappropriation. In order to avoid the trial and being found guilty, he run away to Honduras. There he started a friendship with a famous train robber. Also, there he coined the expression “banana republic” that appeared in his book Cabbages and Kings.

But when he knew his wife coudn't come to Honduras (as they had planned) because she was dying of tuberculosis, he went back to the USA. He had spent six months in Honduras. Back in the USA, he was found guilty of misappropriation and got a penalty of 5 years in prison, but he went out after 3 years because of his good behaviour.

Then he moved to New York, the setting of most of his stories.

He died when he was only 48 years old of cirrhosis: as you can imagine, he was a heavy drinker.

While he lived in New York, he was a very prolific author because he wrote a story every week for different magazines. He was a popular author; his stories are witty, funny and with a surprising ending, but he wasn’t very praised by critics, because they thought he wasn’t deep enough.

His most known short stories are The Gift of the Magi (where a very poor marriage try to buy presents each other in secret), The Ransom of Great Chief (where two bandits kidnap a boy, and the things doesn’t go as easily as they thought), The Last Leaf (where and old artist helps, in a very special way, to spirit another young artist who doesn’t want to fight for her own life), Hearts and Hands (where a prisoner and his guard travel by train and there they find an old acquaintance), etc. 

The Cop and the Anthem

It was published in December 1904, and it’s a typical Henrian story. It has irony, witty sentences and an unexpected ending. Furthermore, it was adapted for the cinema (as a part of a longer movie) with Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe as stars.

It’s about a lazy homeless who feels winter is coming, and knows he’s going to be cold, and, as he lives in the streets, he has to look for warm accommodation. According to his opinion, the best he can get is some months in prison: there he will be fed and will have bed and blankets and a cell with a roof on it and walls around. But the question is how can be he put into prison? So he tries different ways, that is, different minor crimes, and waits for an officer to arrest him. But all of his attempts are a failure, so at the end he decides..., but I’m not going to be a spoiler telling you the end!

I like this kind of stories because they’re pure entertainment, and they are sincere and not pretentious. You read them, and you feel immediately satisfied and happy. But, on the other hand, they don’t make you meditate, they don’t give you new ideas and they don’t stimulate your intellectual or moral curiosity. All in all, however, they’re enjoyable.

QUESTIONS

In the story The Last Leaf, there is a personification: Pneumonia is treated like a person who walks around, touches people and kills them. What personification do we have in our story? Explain its elements.
Our protagonist, what cannot he do to get warm in winter that other (richer) people do?
What was Blackwell’s Island, or, simply, the Island?
What’s the Boreas in our story? What about the bluecoats?
How did Soapy protect himself from the cold the previous night?
Why doesn’t he like to go to a charity institution?
 
Explain the different ways to get arrested, and so an accommodation on the Island:

The expensive restaurant way
The breaking of a shop-window glass way
The regular restaurant way
The annoying a young woman way
The disorderly behaviour way
The umbrella way

 
What are the choosiest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm in the expensive restaurant?
What does it mean that “the minutest coin and himself were strangers”?
How does Soapy feel after hearing the church music?
At last, how did he get a place on the Island?

VOCABULARY

honk, hegira, parley, minion, loaf, telltale, woo, demeanour, cant, sud, larceny