《麦琪的礼物》所阐释人性意识 (2)
Humor is one of America’s literary traditions. Starting from Washington Irving, many writers are good at writing interesting funny and profound story. Irving’s humor is teasing with a touch of irony at goodwill; Mark Twain’s humorous was reflected in slang-filled, funny, witty descriptions and exaggerated image, revealing truths of life; Irwin Shaw’s humor puts the focus on the humorous character description. Henry inherited this tradition under the influence of contemporary writers. And ups and downs of life make his unique humor out of the ordinary ----- full of bitter laughter, exaggeration, sarcasm, humor, humorous, witty, humorous, depression, and melancholy mood. Reading The Gift of Magi makes people smile, and reading The COP and The Anthem makes people sad (Halliday 94). It is the “smile with tears” that deepened the social significance of the work, showing a long history of artistic charm. The end of the novel is one of the most creative contributions that he makes to the United States and history of the world.
Henry is excelled at dramatic plot and foreshadowing as well as creating contradiction, and a surprise ending finally appears at the end of the story, which makes the reader feel enlightened and exhausted. But the writer is fast and more in writing, so this approach is using excessive inevitably which makes people feel the obvious drawbacks of same and formulaic. His ending of the novel is often surprising. He depicted numerous characters that are full of the joy of life, so he was known as the “United States living encyclopedia of humor.”
Henry is worthy of one of the “three short story writers in the world”. The excellent writing skills make his novels have a “Henry style”. Henry James, The United States novelist and literary critic, said that in the broadest context novels can be seen as a personal and direct impressions of life reflecting that theme choice was not accidental, but was linked with their different experiences, thoughts and feelings about life and endless thinking. So we can say that novel reflects writer’s attitude towards life.
II. The Fundamental Cause of Human Consciousness as the Theme of Henry’s Novel
Writer’s choice of themes is not accidental, which often reflects their different experiences, thoughts and feelings about life. The United States social and cultural have great Influence on the human consciousness in his novels. As we all know, Henry’s life is tough and he deeply feels the suffering and disaster of the lower rungs of society, through which he saw the nature of social evils of the United States. Extraordinary experience brought him extraordinary pain, which also made him believe “experience can give all his worldly favors” in exchange for his unique writing material, making him the excellent writers worldwide (Holman 65).
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