从小人物形象看欧亨利的人性观(2)

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3.2 Beauty and Kindness—Common Characteristics of These Nobodies’ Images 8

3.3 O·Henry’s View of Humanity. 10

4 Conclusion 12

Bibliography 13

1 Introduction

William Sidney Porter, whose pen name was O·Henry, was born in Greenboro, North Carolina, in 1862. His father, Algernon Sydney Porter was a doctor and an editor, and his mother sometimes wrote poetry. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. In Houston, he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

In 1894 William Sidney Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1896, O·Henry was charged with embezzling funds from the First National Bank of Austin, Texas, where he had worked from 1891 to 1894. The amount of money was small and might have been an accounting error. However he chose to flee to Honduras rather than stand trail. Learning that his wife was dying, he returned to Texas in 1897 and after her death, turned himself in to authorities. He served three years of a five-year sentence at the federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. While being tortured and suffering a lot, he became a pharmacist to the prison which enabled him to write stories based on the life he had experienced in Texas and elsewhere. It was the penitentiary ordeal that changed him from William Porter to O·Henry, from a newspaper columnist to a mature writer. Upon his release in 1901, he settled in New York and began writing full time. His life in the previous years granted him new sensations and adventures, many of which were transformed into more than 140 stories. On the other hand, he would suffer intensely from loneliness and insecurity, while striving in vain to elude the shadow of his past. He was only forty-eight when he died and was at the peak of his career.源!自`751+文*论(文`网[www.751com.cn

He had the experience working for newspapers and banks. He served three years in prison in Columbus, Ohio and it was while in prison that he seriously began to pursue the craft and art of writing of short stories.

Like a meteor his career flashed across the literary firmament. For the brief span of roughly a decade he wrote at a fevered, hectic pace. For instance, in one two year period he wrote more than 110 stories. Perhaps, like Schubert, he realized he had not long to live — that his work, if he were to accomplish much, had to be done quickly. And like Schubert, his work was interrupted by death. Surely he would have produced more of significance had he continued to live; nevertheless, it is doubtful that he would have produced anything of greater quality than that which he did manage to finish.

O·Henry created about 270 short stories, one long novel and a few poetries all his life. His works reflected his attitude towards life, society phenomenon and nature. His prominent achievement is his short stories. His stories are full of colorful characters most of whom are derived from his inclination to wander streets and parks, and to talk to people of every kind and condition. And all of his stories are ingeniously conceived, with the endings always contrary to readers' expectations. These short stories are included in “Cabbages and kings” (1904) “The four million” (1906) “Hearts of the West” (1907) “Rolling Stones” (1913) and so on. All of his works could be classified into 3 types. The first one focused on people’s life in western America .Another one mainly described America large cities’ life. The third type depicted the life in Latin American. It’s the works that describes people’s life of city had the biggest influence on the culture history.