Comparing Gift Of The Magi and The Last Leaf by O Henry (Essay Example)

Have you ever loved someone so much you would sacrifice your most prized possession or know someone who had or has pneumonia? In O Henry's short stories, The Last Leaf and The gift of the magi, the 2 stories were called out for being too romantic and not very reasonable because of how much love and affection the characters in the stories show each other. For example, Old Behrman was an old painter past his sixties and had always wanted to make masterpieces and his best painting had saved Johnsey's life-giving her hope and completely changing her mindset.

 The characters in the stories were a little too compatible with each other and their relationships are not very logical and especially in O henry's short story The Last Leaf. In The Last Leaf, it starts off with a lot of questions that could be confusing to someone who is reading the story for the first time. And also the sentence “Mr. Pneumonia was not a nice old gentleman. A nice old gentleman would not hurt a weak little woman from California. But Mr.Pneumonia touched Johnsy with his cold finger” You cant spread pneumonia by touching someone else and also in the text the sentances 

“His shoesand his clothes were wet and as cold as ice. Everyonewondered where he had been. The night had been so cold and wild.“And then they found some things. May make others think being out cold get get them pneumonia but that is false.

In O Henry's short story, The gift of the magi Jim got Della the clips she's always wanted and Della got him a gold watch chain and they can't even use them because they sold something valuable to each of them. Jim sold his watch and Della sold her hair. The two characters don't even use the items and they just put them up for storage after. I guess their relationship with each other is special because I don't think I could ever sell my hair for 20 dollars or even a family heirloom. If you sold your hair today, then as long as Dellas's hair, you would have made at least more than 20 dollars depending on your height. 

O Henry's work focuses on the life of people during the century in New York. A lot of people who read the short stories said they are too romantic, in The gift of the magi, for example, Della and Jim's relationship is way too romantic and it seems to be very unrealistic. In real life, most people buy their loved ones Christmas gifts late, but the day before? And I get that Jim and Della love each other so much, but they sacrificed things that meant so much to them like Jim's watch. It was a family heirloom. Why in the world would you sacrifice a family heirloom? And Della sacrificed her hair, sure it will grow back, but seriously she sacrificed her looks.

Overall I feel like these two stories are way too sentimental and unrealistic because some of the events in the story won't happen in real life like what I mentioned before in The gift of the magi, Della and Jim sacrificed a family heirloom and hair, and in The Last Leaf Old Behrman romanticized dying and talked about it so much he seemed to be obsessed but, he cared so much about Johnsey he painted a leaf on the wall to change her perspective on dying and basically sacrificed his own life dying  2 days later and had an even weaker immune system than she did.