An Unfinished Story, by O. Henry

Review

Summary and analysis

Audiobook

SUMMARY

Our narrator is having a dream. In his dream, a group of very prosperous looking spirits (or souls) are arranged waiting for the last judgement. A policeman asks the narrator if he belongs to this group… But, to know the ending of his dream, we have to read Dulcie’s story first.
Dulcie is a shop assistant working in a big department store. She doesn’t like much her job (the narrator says in that store they could sell everything), and she earns a very small salary for her work. Also, she lives poorly in a very small lodging (a furnished room) and she is all the time under the watch of her landlady. In her apartment there are the usual simple pieces of furniture, and on the walls some pictures of historical figures. The one she has more reverence for is general Kitchener’s. She doesn’t know who exactly was.

One day, a man they call Piggy asks her for a date. They are going to go out to a restaurant, to the cinema or the theatre, etc. Piggy (his real name is Willy) is an elegant man and appears to have a lot of money. Every girl has to be happy to have a date with him, but at the same time girls say he is a prowler in search of beautiful girls, a womanizer who only wants to seduce and forget. Dulcie is elated about the date and she wants to dress beautifully, but she calculates all the money she has until the last cent, and she realizes she doesn’t have enough to buy the things she would like to shop for. So she feels a big disappointment with her life.

The appointed time comes, and Piggy goes to pick Dulcie up, but at the last moment Dulcie looks for an excuse (that she’s ill, or something) to not go out with him. Feeling miserable, she sits to have her poor dinner, alone and pitiful. But perhaps another day she’ll go out with Piggy, who knows.

This is Dulcie’s story.

But what about the dream? How does it finish?

 

QUESTIONS

Do you think there is a heaven or a hell? How do you imagine them? Nietzsche said hell or heaven is our life lived over and over again after we die.

Why do you think Dulcie doesn’t want to go out?

Who are the people in the pictures on the wall? General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, O’Callahan.

Do you think that if all the world’s wealth will be distributed between all the people on the planet in order to make everybody equal (in the question of money), we here would be poorer? And what about “the next day will be rich people and poor people again”?

What is a fair salary? What do you think: A person has to earn according to their necessities or according to their skills or talents? Do you think if you earn more money, your work is better?

 

VOCABULARY

groan, bar-of-judgement, follow suit, bondsmen, cereus, dime, licorice, carouse, swine, marshmallows, pongee, spurious, rickety, snippy

A Service of Love, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary and analysis

SUMMARY

This is a story of true love.

Joe Larrabee and Delia Caruthers wanted to be artists: the boy, a painter, and the girl, a musician. Both of them went to New York from their villages in search of opportunities.

They met in a club where people talked about art and artists, and they fell in love and got married straight away. Happier couldn’t they be: they had their art and they had each other. But they had to live in poverty. Their love was “through thick and thin”.

They attended lessons to improve their art; Joe painted in the great Magister workshop, and Delia’s teacher was Rosenstock.

But the money didn’t last as much as they would like, and they had to do something to earn their living; so Delia looked for pupils to teach piano classes, and Joe had to sell his paintings to any redneck that came from the country, for example, Peoria; but neither of them allowed the other to abandon their art.

So they went on being short of money for a while. Every day they told each other their daily routine and how they did in their jobs. But one day, Delia came home with her hand bandaged; she told her husband she got burnt serving a dish to her pupil at her house (according to Delia, the pupil was a General's daughter). But Joe knew where the cloth for the bandage came from and started questioning Delia. At the end, she had to tell the truth, and so he also had to confess his secret. Was this disclosure going to kill their love?

 

QUESTIONS

What is love? Can you give us an ultimate definition? Do you think sexual love is essentially different from friendly love?

How do we know if they had or didn’t have talent? Are there any hints in the text?

How do you know if a person has any talent?

Tell us something about Émile Waldteufel, oolong, Joseph Rosenstock, Benvenuto Cellini.

Do you believe in living “through thick and thin”? Do you have any anecdotes about this romantic ideal?

 

VOCABULARY

chipped in, atelier, A sharp, janitor, dresser, mantel, sandbag, switchman, chafing dish, hatchet, scalloped, trump, veal, goatee, freight depot, Welsh rarebit [rabbit, sic], iron, make up

The Shawl, by Cynthia Ozick

Audiobook (almost)

Summary and analysis (video)

Summary and analysis (text)

Conversartion with Cynthia Ozick

A Book Club meeting about The Shawl

BIOGRAPHY AND SUMMARY,

by Teresa Creixell

Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
She was born in New York City on April 17, 1928, and raised in the Bronx. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and owned a pharmacy.
She attended Ohio University where she completed her bachelor’s degree in English literature, focusing on the novels by Henry James.
She was married to Bernard Hallote, a lawyer, until his death in 2017. Their daughter, Raquel Hallote, directs a Jewish studies program at SUNY Purchase.
Her literary works have been acquired by Yale University.
Ozick’s fiction and essays often deal with the lives of American Jews, but she also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. She has also written and translated poetry.
The Holocaust is also a dominant theme. For example, in Who Owns Anne Frank? she writes that the true meaning of the diary has been distorted.
She has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.
 
The Shawl
 
The Shawl is an unforgettable and heartbreaking short story published in the New Yorker in 1980. Ozick later included it in a novel about the main character, Rosa, in a single volume also titled The Shawl.
She felt compelled to write The Shawl after reading a sentence in William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960.
In later years, Ozick said that her short story was not a document, it was an imagination.
The story is written in the third person and is full of metaphors.
 
SUMMARY
 
The story takes place during the Holocaust.
A mother, Rosa, was walking with her baby, Magda, between her breasts, and her 14-year-old niece Stella. They were very hungry and were in a line of prisoners heading towards a Nazi concentration camp. The soldiers did not know that Magda existed.
Rosa breastfeeds her daughter with the little milk she has and wraps her close to her in her shawl. Stella is jealous of Magda’s shawl; she also wants to be protected.
Rosa is no longer hungry, she feels as if she is fainting, in a trance.
She looks at her daughter inside the shawl, her fair skin is so different from hers, her blue eyes and yellow hair like the star embroidered on the coat. She looks “Aryan”.
She would like to leave Magda in one of the villages they pass through, but she cannot move beyond the line or she will be shot, and she does not know if a woman would really take Magda. It’s not worth the risk.
Rosa no longer has milk, but the shawl is magical, it can feed Magda for 3 days and 3 nights. Magda doesn’t move, she’s alive but she’s very still and quiet.
At 15 months, Magda knows how to walk, and her mother knows that the soldiers will soon discover her, but it’s Stella who takes off her shawl when Magda was still in the barracks, where her mother had left her.
From outside, Rosa sees her daughter walking around looking for the shawl, and Magda shouts “maa..”
Rosa is scared, but at the same time happy because she hears her voice ―she thought she was mute.
The mother gets the shawl, Stella was cold and had covered herself with it.
She goes out to the square and, in the most tragic moment of the story, Rosa sees how, far away, a soldier throws her daughter against the electric fence. The girl is shouting “mama!”
Rosa puts the shawl in her mouth to suppress her own cries.

QUESTIONS

Besides the Holocaust, what other genocides do you know about? Tell us a bit of information about one you know.

In your opinion, how can the human being become a mass murderer?

What do you know about Hannah Arendt?

In your view, were all Germans guilty / responsible for the Nazi regime? Or only a part of them?

Is Stella responsible for Magda's death?

VOCABULARY

sore, ravenous, teetering, windingsm fled, gums, cinnamon, spindles, thighs, flopped, roll-call, devoid, windpipe, ash-stippled, lice, whimper, shins, turd-braids, whip, goblet, domino

The Roads We Take, by O. Henry

Film (audio in Russian, subtitles in English)

Another movie (audio in English, no subtitles)

Audiobook

Summay and analysis

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken, analysis

Hit the Road, Jack, by Ray Charles

SUMMARY
This is the story of an untrustworthy bandit, "Shark" Dodson.
He and two mates more, John Big Dog and Bob Tidball, robbed a train. In the fray of the attack, John Big Dog was shot dead by one of the train employees. The other two bandits ran away with a big booty of thirty thousand dollars, and happier they were because now they were only two to divide the amount: there wasn’t a third in the party.

They got to the place where they had left their horses and set John Big Dog’s horse free. Then they mount and went away as fast as they could. But during their flight, Bob Tidball’s horse broke its leg, and they had to kill the brute. So now they were two robbers, their booty and only a horse; in consequence, their escape was a bit more difficult, but not impossible. However, Shark Dodson decided that two people were too many people for a horse, and got rid of Bob Tidball murdering him in cold blood to secure his flight and to keep all the money for him only, even though Bob had been a staunch friend of his.

Some years later, we find Dodson  turned on a very respectable rich man with his own company. He had also friends, the  best one of them, Williams, with a big number of shares in Dodson’s company. But all of a sudden, there was a financial crisis, and Williams was on the point of losing all his money. He went to Dodson to ask for help, and Dodson…

 

QUESTIONS

Do you think everyone gets what he deserves in this world? Do you have any example (real or fictional)?

Do you think it’s possible to go up in society and become very rich following strictly legal and ethical ways?

Think about case of betrayal you know and tell us about it, as if it were a story (about love, politics, money…) Do you know any case in which treachery could be justified?

In a moment, Dodson said that he had a most remarkable dream. Do you think it's possible that the first part of the story was only a dream?

 

 

VOCABULARY
quarter-breed, pieces of ordnance, tender, ore, through the mill, currency, conductor, unwittingly, chaparral, pommel, primeval, spryest, posse, haul, sorrel, bottom, cards and spades, desperado, crowbait, boodle, hit the trail, timber, spoil, hitting the breeze, pards, vamoose, cupidity, holders-up, upholstered

After Twenty Years, by O. Henry

Film adaptation (acted by students of English)

Audiobook

Study and analysis

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

A policeman was walking through the streets of New York doing his rounds.
It was about 10 at night, and, in front of the door of a hardware store, there was a man. When he saw the policeman, he told him not to be alarmed because he was waiting for a friend whom had not seen for 20 years, and that 20 years ago they had agreed to meet precisely on this day at 10 at night.
After listening to him, the policeman said good night and continued doing his rounds.
Twenty minutes later, a tall man approached Bob, who was waiting for his friend Jimmy Wells. They greeted each other effusively and walked down the dark street. When they arrived in front of a pharmacy where the electric lights illuminated the street, Bob realized that the man who was with him was not his old friend Jimmy Wells.
The man was a plainclothes policeman who had arrested him for being a criminal, alias "Silky".
However, the police gave him a note signed by Jimmy Wells, which said: Bob, as we had agreed, at 10 p.m. I was in front of the hardware store…

QUESTIONS

How would you feel better, being loyal to your friends or doing your duty?

In your opinion, which one of these sentences it's the truest one: 1-People never change, or 2-People are always changing, are never the same?

Have you been on a meeting where people hadn't seen each other for a long time? Tell us your experience.

VOCABULARY

on the beat, club, thoroughfare, stalwart, scaafpin, chum, hustling, stanchest, plodder, pile, groove, razor-edge, bully, outline, pug, plain clothes 

The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry

Full House (Chapter 4: The Ransom of the Red Chief, minute 1.05.15) 

Another film

And the one of the picture!

Academic activities

SUMMARY

Bill and Sam had all of a sudden an idea, or, better, an inspiration, and this idea was kidnapping a child and getting a lot of money for his ransom. They looked for a very calm and quiet place far from the bustling and populated cities. Then they choose a wealthy citizen with a lovely child. They also looked for a place to keep the hostage until they get the ransom.

They found their prey and took him, but the boy fought back. In the end they could carry him to their hideaway.  However the boy, once in the cave in the mountains, enjoyed the situation: he was camping out, nothing he ever did, and felt happy and started to play pretending he was an Indian, the Red Chief. He demanded that the two kidnappers played with him. He was so excited that nobody went to sleep until the small hours of the morning. Bill and Sam knew that the boy wouldn’t escape.

The next day he got up very early and started to play Indians again. He was trying to cut Bill’s scalp. Sam saw it just in time to take the knife from the boy’s hands. Sam also had to be watchful because the “Red Chief” had said he (Sam) was to be tied to a stake and burned to death.

Bill and Sam expected that patrols would roam around the country and the mountains searching for the boy, but the landscape was quiet as ever.

The boy attacked Bill again and Sam had to restore peace. But the child went on being mischievous, especially with Bill.

Sam decided to immediately send a message to the father asking for the ransom and giving instructions about how to pay it and recover the boy, the time and the place. He went to another village to send the message, and all was suspiciously calm too.

When he got back to the cave, the boy wasn’t an Indian anymore: he was a scout, and Bill his horse. Bill had to carry the boy on his back for a long way and now he was exhausted. So, he couldn’t bear the boy anymore and decided on the spot to send him home and forget about all the business. But unfortunately for Bill, the boy came back to the kidnappers: he was having such a great time!

Sam asked Bill to have a bit more patience: at night the business will be completed, and they would get rich and free from the naughty boy.

At the right time and the right place, a messenger arrived by bike. But, instead of the ransom, he left a note in the place. It was from the father, and it said…

 

QUESTIONS

What do you know about Stockholm syndrome?

What can we make of King Herod legend?

What is your opinion about educating children at home and not going to school?

 

VOCABULARY

flannel-cake, undeleterious, Maypole, philoprogenitoveness, lackadaisical, bloodhounds, passer and forecloser, brake, hitched, court-plaster, buzzard, warpath, broiled, possum, pesky, rubber for, pard, imp, dote on, yeomanry, dun, fold, niggerhead, stockade, foil, hoss, chawbacons, whiskerando, yodel, wabbled, oats, Bedlam, ewe, leech, calliope

Witches' Loafes, by O. Henry

Video (an amateur film)

Summary and analysis

Analysis

Themes

SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma

The story is about Miss Martha. She is a single middle-aged lady who runs her own bakery. She has a good heart and she sympathizes with one of her customers, a man with a German accent, who only buys two loaves of stale bread, two or three times a week.

Miss Martha finds him attractive. The man, Blumberger, doesn’t seem rich in any way. His clothes are mended in some places. Despite that, he looks neat and is very polite. She is sure that he is an artist, and very poor, because once she saw a red and brown stain on his fingers.

Miss Martha imagines the artist sitting in the middle of his empty room, having the stale bread and water for his meals. She falls in love with the idea of helping him and maybe creating a relationship.

One day, Miss Martha changes her old apron for a blue-dotted silk one, and behind the counter, she looks more beautiful. She also prepares a mixture of seeds and borax for her complexion, to make her more attractive to him. Then the customer arrives for his stale bread, and while he is distracted by a fire-engine outside, Miss Martha puts some fresh butter inside the stale loaves and gives them to him without him noticing. She imagines how he will enjoy the surprise of finding the fresh butter after his painting work. 

A few hours later, the outside bell rings. Two men are standing there. One is a young man smoking a pipe, the other is her favourite customer. He is upset and very angry. He is shouting, accusing her of mocking him, and insults her with German words. 

Poor Miss Martha! She feels ashamed and guilty… She removes her apron replacing it with the old one and throws the mixture out of the window. The romantic bubble has burst.

Some reflections

Some people have a tendency to make assumptions based on appearances, and there is a danger of acting on those assumptions without fully understanding a person’s situation. Miss Martha’s sympathetic heart and her desire to help the artist are admirable, but her actions are wrong and hurtful. 

The story’s title “Witches’ loaves” gives the association between women and evil enchantment. Perhaps the title suggests that Martha has attempted to “bewitch” Blumberger with butter in order to try to win him as her husband.

QUESTIONS
How can you recognize a genius?
Are pictures an exact representation of reality? (Think about Canaletto and his Venetian pictures, or about Stubbs and his running horses.)

Do you believe in first impressions? When, or how, can you decide you know a person? Imagine you go to a blind date and you meet someone new: When and why do you decide to go on with the meeting, or to stop it?

On your view, what are the essencial qualities a shopkeeper must have?

Why being single was a shame (mostly for a woman) in older times?

 

VOCABULARY

sympathetic, darned, stale, garret, chops, showcase, Sally Luns, quince, complexion, nickel, dairyman, fluttering, edibles, dwelt, easel, viciously

  

By Courier, by O. Henry

The Go-Between (a novel and two films)

Audio with text

You can find another another audio (slower) here

SUMMARY

In this story, a young man starts a communication with a young woman of his acquaintance through a boy who acts as a messenger (or perhaps a bit more than a messenger). The woman is sitting on a bench in the park. The man arrives, sees her and calls a boy who is nearby. He asks him to deliver a message to the woman and gives him a tip. The woman answers the man’s message using the same way. But the messenger conveys the messages using very different words to the ones he gets. Anyhow, man and woman understand what he says. But at the end, the man thinks that, for an unmistakable understanding of the communication, it’s necessary a written message.

QUESTIONS

Why did the author make the messenger change the message’s language? 

What do you know about the Greek myth of Hermes?

What channels of communication do you use and what do you use them for? Do you still send letters or postcards by standard mail?

According to your view, jealousy: is it something genetic, or social? How can you stop being jealous (if you believe it is a negative feeling)?

What do you know about the expression "don't kill the messenger"?

VOCABULARY
striding, tagged, countenance, moose, sake, plaid bicycle cap, song and dance, paramount,

pleas, conservatory, propinquity, soft-soap, beat the band, ski-bunk, bum, sport

Hearts and Hands, by O. Henry

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 couldn’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.

SUMMARY

The story takes place on a train. An elegant young woman is sitting in a coach when two men get up to the train, go into her coach and sit down in front of her. One of the men is nice and handsome; the other is an unpleasant sulky man with a disagreeable appearance. They are tied together by a pair of handcuffs. The worldly woman immediately recognizes the nicer man and greets him with a feeling. He can only give her his left hand, because his right one is handcuffed to the nasty man; this man, however, tells the girl that’s what a marshal has to do when he takes a wrongdoer to the prison. All the same, the young woman and the nice man start a lively and happy conversation. After a while, the ruffled man says it’s cruel for a prisoner not to have time for smoking: since the morning he hasn’t had any; the nice man understands the request, and they both go out to enjoy some tobacco. The other passengers make some remarks about the curious pair.

QUESTIONS 

What is the relation between the title and the story?

What kind of criminal do you think you could sympathize with?

Do you think the art of conversation can be learned? What are the features of a good conversation? Why do / don't you like chatting? Tell us ways to start a conversation, ways to "break the ice".

VOCABULARY

influx, handcuffed, forestalled, pen, counterfeiting, butterfly days, 

Academic activity

Audiobook

Summary and analysis

Film adaptation (very free)

October and June, by O. Henry

SUMMARY, by J. Guiteras

The captain, who had kept his uniform worn out by time and service in a closet, was enchanted by the sweet and smiling lips of a woman.

He received a letter from this woman telling him that she would not marry him because of the age difference between them.

The captain, who was rich and handsome, did not resign himself to this refusal and took a train to see her so that she could reconsider.

She stood firm in her decision, arguing that within a few years one of them would want to be quiet at home and the other would be crazy about going out to parties.

The captain was sad because he had lost the battle and returned home.

The next day he reflected and came to the conclusion that Theo, the woman, was right, since one of them was 28 years old and the other was only 19 years old.

 

Reflection: I feel sorry for them because a younger person can always learn a lot from another one who is older and with experience and has a lot to teach to a youngster.

 

QUESTIONS

-Why was the age gap very important in the past, and now isn’t so?

-Do you think we’ll be able to overcome all the clichés? Are prejudices good or bad for daily life?

-In your opinion, what is the relation of the title with the story?

 

VOCABULARY

gloomily, rugged, squared, ‘Pon

BIOGRAPHY, by Begoña Devis

William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina in 1862 and died in New York in 1910. He was a great writer known as O. Henry after a cat he lived with for a time. He is considered one of the masters of the short story. His admirable treatment of surprise narrative endings popularized in English the expression "an O. Henry ending".

He had an eventful life. His mother died when he was three, and he and his father moved to his paternal grandmother's house. As a child he was a good student, and a great reader. He graduated from his aunt's school, who continued teaching him until he was 15. He then began working in his uncle's pharmacy and finally graduated as a pharmacist.

In 1882 he went to Texas, hoping that a change of scenery would improve his persistent cough. There he worked there as a ranch hand, as a cook and as a nanny. When his health improved, he went to Austin, where he worked as a pharmacist and where he began writing short stories. He was popular in the social life in Austin for his storytelling and musical talent. At this time, his problems with alcohol abuse began. In 1887, he eloped with the young Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy family. In 1888 they have a child, who died. In 1889, a new daughter, Margaret, was born.

In 1894, Porter founded a humorous weekly magazine called The Rolling Stone.  Then that magazine collapsed, and he moved to Houston, where he was a journalist at the Houston Post.

The most transcendental event occurred in 1895, when he was accused by the First National Bank of appropriating money that he had under his responsibility. On the eve of the trial he sailed for Honduras, where he lived for seven months, and where he wrote several stories, many of which appear in the book Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term «banana republic», phrase subsequently used to describe a small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America.

In 1897 he returned to Austin when he knew that his wife was dying, and after a few months he was arrested and convicted, spending three years in the Columbus (Ohio) prison. There he continued writing short stories to support his daughter. When he was released from prison, he changed his name to O. Henry and moved to New York, where he lived until his death.

In New York, the city the writer loved and the setting for many of his stories, O. Henry gained public recognition, but he had a deep problem with his alcoholism. Indeed, there is an anecdote that his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi", was written under the pressure of a deadline, in just three hours and accompanied by a whole bottle of whiskey.

From December 1903 to January 1906, he wrote a story a week for the New York World, his most prolific period. He remarried in 1907 to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Lindsey Colem, who left him in 1909.

O. Henry died on June 5, 1910 of cirrhosis of the liver. His funeral was held in New York and he was buried in Asheville, North Carolina. His daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried next to her father.

In the United States, the O. Henry Award for short stories, one of the most important in the world, was created in his memory. Among other writers, it has been awarded to William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Saul Bellow and Woody Allen.