Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports

Slavonic University

Department of Romanic-German

Philology

DIPLOMA PAPER

Types of Essays in Works by Mark Twain and O.Henry

Submitted by the 5th year student

Babina Svetlana

Research advisor Senior teacher

Arnautova A.F.

Chisinau 2007

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CONTENTS

Introduction ……………………………………………………….. 3

Chapter One. Essays as a Special Genre in the World Literature. Types

of Essays.

1.1 The Essay as a literary genre ……………………………… 6

1.2 Types of essay ……………………………………………… 9

1.3 Short story in American Literature ……………………….. 13

1.4 The difference between the essay and the short story ….. 18

Chapter Two. Mark Twain – the Master of Short Sketches. … 20

2.1 Mark Twain’s essays (“Luck” and “How to Tell a

Story and Other essays”) ……………………………………….. 23

2.2 Humorous essays by Mark Twain …………………………. 30

2.3 “Luck” by Mark Twain as an example of the

narrative essay ……………………………………………………. 33

Chapter Three. O.Henry and His Short Stories

3.1 Short stories by O.Henry ……………………………………. 39

3.2 Descriptive essays …………………………………………… 43

3.3 Argumentative essays ………………………………………. 47

Conclusion ………………………………………………………… 52

Bibliography ……………………………………………………… 56

Appendix ………………………………………………………….. 60

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INTRODUCTION

From the appearing of literature appeared and the new genres.

Essay is one of the most recent genres in the world literature although

it spreads widely and develops in the modern literature. We cannot

imagine school without essays. However, this genre in the literary

criticism is not well studying and exist only few works concerning this

theme.

The word essay derives from the French and mean 'to try' or 'to

attempt'. But this term were, is and will be accomplish and perceive

individually by each person and different by time.

The theme of our qualification paper is: “Types of Essays in the

Works by Mark Twain and O.Henry.” The main purpose of our

research is to identify the usage of this genre in the fictions by Mark

Twain and O.Henry. These two writers are both the distinguished

novelists and essayists who rank among the great figures of American

literature.

The novelty of the work consists in the identifying the usage of

the essay in their stories. We consider this question as a novelty

because the majority of critics do not determine the stories by Mark

Twain and O.Henry as essays. The critics identify their works as a

short story. However, studying the fiction by these outstanding

American authors we put the purpose to proof that their stories can be

considerate as essays.

To obtain the main purpose of our research we have set concrete

objectives:

To define the term “essay” and to give its definition;

To study the development of the essay as a separate literary

genre in the world literature;

To give the main classification of the essay;

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To follow up the evaluation of the short story in American

literature;

To find the main differences between the short story and

the essay;

To study the literary career of the Mark Twain and

O.Henry;

To analyze their stories and give the examples of the essay

usage.

For the completion of our main purpose we have used materials

presented in the Internet, magazines and newspapers’ articles.

To achieve the main purpose we have used the next methods :

1. explanation (the terms “essay, humour” have been

explained);

2. analysis (we have made the literary analysis of the

fiction works, we have made the academical analysis

of the types of the essays);

3. comparative analysis (we have made the analysis of

the short story and essay).

Our qualification paper consists of: contents, introduction, three

chapters, conclusion, and bibliography.

Contents name the chapters and the sections of the whole

research.

Introduction introduces the reader into the field of semantic:

poses the aim, objectives of the work, research methods, source used,

the structure of research and its practical relevance. It also points to

the novelty of the given work

Chapter One “Essays as a Special Genre in the World Literature.

Types of Essays” includes four paragraphs and gives the main

definitions of the essay, gives the classification of this genre, it also

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gives the description of the evaluation of the short story in American

literature and the main differences between short story and essay.

Chapter Two “Mark Twain – the Master of Short Sketches”

includes three paragraphs and deals with the studying of the fiction by

Mark Twain and identifying the usage of the essay in his stories.

Chapter Three “O.Henry and His Short Stories” consist of three

paragraphs and gives the vivid examples of the usage of essay in the

stories by O.Henry.

Conclusion summarizes all the practical experience gained in the

process of investigation.

Bibliography gives an overview of scientific literature used in

the research work.

The given topic was widely spread during past decade and started

to redevelop its origins in our days. The “essay” forms new shapes,

characteristics, styles and definitions. This is why, it is very important

to pay attention to all kind of informational sources.

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CHAPTER ONE

ESSAYS AS A SPECIAL GENRE IN THE WORLD

LITERATURE. TYPES OF ESSAYS

1.1 The Essay as a Literary Genre.

The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer , ' to

try' or 'to attempt'. The first author to describe his works as essays was

the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). Inspired in

particular by the works of Plutarch, a translation of whose Oeuvres

morales (Moral works) into French had just been published by Jacques

Amyot, Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first

edition, entitled Essais , was published in two volumes in 1580. For the

rest of his life he continued revising previously published essays and

composing new ones.

“Essays” is the title of a book written by Michel de Montaigne

that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the

literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of

which the book contains a large number. “ Essai” is French for "trial"

or "attempt".

The Montaigne’s style can be designed to intrigue and involve the

reader, sometimes appearing to move in a stream-of-thought from

topic to topic and at other times employing a structured style which

gives more emphasis to the didactic nature of his work. His arguments

are often supported with quotes from classical Greek and Roman texts.

Montaigne's stated goal in his book is to describe man, and

especially himself, with utter frankness. He finds the great variety and

volatility of human nature to be its most basic features. A typical

quote is "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself."

(Montaigne, 2003, p.12) He describes his own poor memory, his

ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting

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emotionally involved, his disgust for man's pursuit of lasting fame,

and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for

death.

For instance, he considered marriage necessary for the raising of

children, but disliked the strong feelings of romantic love as being

detrimental to freedom. One of his quotations is "Marriage is like a

cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside

desperate to get out.” (Montaigne, 2003, p.38)

In education, he favored concrete examples and experience over

the teaching of abstract knowledge that is expected to be accepted

uncritically.

The remarkable modernity of thought apparent in Montaigne's

essays, coupled with their sustained popularity, made them arguably

the most prominent work in French philosophy until the

Enlightenment. Their influence over French education and culture is

still strong. The official portrait of former French president François

Mitterrand pictured him facing the camera, holding an open copy of

the Essays in his hands.

Analysis of the differences and additions between editions shows

how Montaigne's thoughts evolved over time. Not unremarkably, he

does not seem to remove previous writings, even when they conflict

with his newer views.

Francis Bacon 's essays, published in book form in 1597, 1612,

and 1625, were the first works in English that described themselves as

essays . Ben Johnson first used the word essayist in English in 1609,

according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Notable essayists are legion. They include: Virginia Wolf ,

Adrienne Rich , Alamgir Hashmi , Joan Didion , Susan Sontag , Natalia

Ginzburg , Sara Suleri , Annie Dillard , Joseph Addison , Richard Steele ,

Charles Lamb , William Hazlitt , Thomas Babington Macaulay , Ralph

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Waldo Emerson , Walter Bagehot , George Orwell , John D'Agata , Gore

Vidal and E.B. White .

It is very difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. The

following remarks by Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, may help:

"Like the novel, the essay is a literary device for saying almost

everything about almost anything. By tradition, almost by definition,

the essay is a short piece, and it is therefore impossible to give all

things full play within the limits of a single essay. But a collection of

essays can cover almost as much ground, and cover it almost as

thoroughly, as can a long novel. Montaigne's Third Book is the

equivalent, very nearly, of a good slice of the “ Comédie Humaine”.

Essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be

studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference. There

is the pole of the personal and the autobiographical; there is the pole

of the objective, the factual, and the concrete-particular; and there is

the pole of the abstract-universal. Most essayists are at home and at

their best in the neighborhood of only one of the essay's three poles,

or at the most only in the neighborhood of two of them. There are the

predominantly personal essayists, who write fragments of reflective

autobiography and who look at the world through the keyhole of

anecdote and description. There are the predominantly objective

essayists who do not speak directly of themselves, but turn their

attention outward to some literary or scientific or political theme. …

And how splendid, how truly oracular are the utterances of the great

generalizes! … The most richly satisfying essays are those which make

the best not of one, not of two, but of all the three worlds in which it is

possible for the essay to exist" (Huxley A., 1964, p.4)

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1.2 Types of Essay.

Many students' first exposure to the genre is the five paragraph

essay, a highly structured form requiring an introduction presenting

the thesis statement; three body paragraphs, each of which presents an

idea to support the thesis together with supporting evidence and

quotations; and a conclusion, which restates the thesis and summarizes

the supporting points. The use of this format is controversial.

Proponents argue that it teaches students how to organize their

thoughts clearly in writing; opponents characterize its structure as

rigid and repetitive.

Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000

to 5,000 words) are often more discursive. They sometimes begin with

a short summary analysis of what has previously been written on a

topic, which is often called a literature review . Longer essays may

also contain an introductory page in which words and phrases from the

title are tightly defined. Most academic institutions will require that

all substantial facts, quotations, and other supporting material used in

an essay be referenced in a bibliography at the end of the text. This

scholarly convention allows others (whether teachers or fellow

scholars) to understand the basis of the facts and quotations used to

support the essay's argument, and thereby help to evaluate to what

extent the argument is supported by evidence, and to evaluate the

quality of that evidence. The academic essay tests the student's ability

to present their thoughts in an organized way and tests their

intellectual capabilities.

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Some types of essays are:1

1. Descriptive Essays: The aim of descriptive essays is to

provide a vivid picture of a person, location, object, event, or debate.

It will offer details that will enable the reader to imagine the item

described.

(http://depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks/writing/essay.html#descriptiv

e – general information about descriptive essays)

2. Narrative Essays: The aim of a narrative essay is to describe a

course of events from a subjective vantage point, and may be written

in first-person present or first person past tense. Though not always

chronological, narrative essays do follow the development of a person

through a series of experiences and reflections. The focus of the essay

is often to more clearly identify the point of view of the narrator, and

to express common features of subjectivity.

(http://depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks/writing/essay.html#descriptiv

e – general information about descriptive essays)

3. Compare and Contrast Essays: The aim of a compare and

contrast essay is to develop the relationship between two or more

things. Generally, the goal is to show that superficial differences or

similarities are inadequate, and that closer examination reveals their

unobvious, yet significant, relations or differences.

4. Persuasive Essays: In a persuasive essay, the writer tries to

persuade the reader to accept an idea or agree with an opinion.

The writer's purpose is to convince the reader that her or his point of

view is a reasonable one. The persuasive essay should be written in a

style that grabs and holds the reader's attention, and the writer's

opinion should be backed up by strong supporting details. Since the

1 «Жанр Эссе: К проблеме формирования теории», Т.Ю.Лямзина – general types of essays

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reader can not share the writer’s opinion, the writer usually offers

arguments, or reasons, to support the position.

5. Expository Essays: is a short nonfiction piece that explains or

gives information about a topic. The word “expository”, in fact,

simply means to give information about something or to explain what

is difficult to understand. In expository essays, writers not only

explain information, but may also express a particular point of view or

opinion on their topic. Expository essays are usually written to

explain or to inform. But many expository essays do both. For

example, “The Indian All Around Us” by Bernard DeVoto, not only

informs us that the Indian word “coyotl” was changed to the American

word “coyote”, but it also explains the reason “why” because people

found the “tl” sound hard to pronounce. ( http://www.wikipedia.org –

general information about essays)

6. Argumentative Essays: Argumentative essays are most often

used to address controversial issues - i.e. serious issue over which

there is some evident, disagreement (Like Recent Election Campaign

[Who wins??]). An argument is a position combined with its

supporting reasons. Argumentative papers thus set out a main claim

and then provide reasons for thinking that the claim is true.

7. Imitation: Imitation essays are essays in which the writer

pulls out the main thesis and outline of a particular paper, and then

writes an essay in his or her own style.

There exist and types of non-literary essays 2 . They are divided

into:

1. Visual Arts: In the visual arts, an essay is a preliminary

drawing or sketch upon which a final painting or sculpture is based,

made as a test of the work's composition (this meaning of the term,

2 . http://www.wikipedia.org – types of non-literary essays

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like several of those following, comes from the word essay's meaning

of "attempt" or "trial").

2. Music: In the realm of music, composer Samuel Barber wrote

a set of “Essays for Orchestra," relying on the form and content of the

music to guide the listener's ear, rather than any extra-musical plot or

story.

3. Film: Film essays are cinematic forms of the essay, with the

film consisting of the evolution of a theme or an idea rather than a

plot per se; or the film literally being a cinematic accompaniment to a

narrator reading an essay. The genre is not well-defined but might

include works of early Soviet documentarians like Dziga Vertov, or

present-day filmmakers like Michael Moore or Errol Morris.

4. Photography: A photographic essay is an attempt to cover a

topic with a linked series of photographs.

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1.3 Short Story in American Literature.

The period between the Civil War in America and the outbreak of

the Great War in Europe in 1914 may be termed in the history of prose

fiction the Era of the Short Story. Everywhere, in France, in Russia, in

England, in America, more and more the impressionistic prose tale, the

conte—short, effective, a single blow, a moment of atmosphere, a

glimpse at a climactic instant—came, especially in the magazines, to

dominate fictional literature. Formless at first, often overloaded with

mawkishness, with essay effects, with moralizing purpose, and

dominating background, it grew constantly in proportion and restraint

and artistic finish until it was hailed as a new genre, a peculiar

product of nineteenth century conditions, one especially adapted to the

American temperament and the American culture.

That the prose story was no innovation peculiar to later

literature, is an axiom that must precede every discussion of it. It is as

old as the race; it has cropped out abundantly in every literature and

every period. That it has taken widely differing forms during its long

history is also axiomatic. Every generation and every race has had its

own ideals in the matter, has set its own fashions. One needs

remember only The Book of Ruth, The Thousand and one Nights, the

Elizabethan novella, the Sir Roger de Coverley papers, Johnson’s

Rambler, Hannah More’s moral tales, and the morbid romance of the

early nineteenth-century annuals. The modern short story is only the

latest fashion in story telling—short fiction à la mode.(Cambridge

Historyof English and American Literature, www.baterlby.org)

In America the evolution of the form may be traced through at

least four stages. It began with the eighteenth-century tale of the

Hannah More type, colourless, formless, undramatic, “subservient,” to

use a contemporary phrase, “only to the interest of virtue”—a form

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peculiarly adapted to flourish in the Puritanic atmosphere of the new

nation.

Then came the work of Washington Irving  —the blending of the

moral tale with the Addisonian essay, especially in its Sir Roger de

Coverley phase. The evolution was a peculiar one, a natural result of

that isolation of early America which belated all its art forms and kept

it always a full generation behind the literary fashions of London.

Never did he outgrow this formative influence: always he was of

the eighteenth century, an essayist, a moralist, a sketcher of manners,

an antiquarian with a reverence for the past, a sentimentalist. His

sketchy moral essays and his studies of manners and character grew

naturally into expository stories, illustrations, narratives of a traveller

set in an atmosphere attractive to the untravelled American of the

time, all imagination and longing. He added to the moral tale of his

day characterization, humour, atmosphere, literary charm, but he

added no element of constructive art. He lacked the dramatic; he

overloaded his tales with descriptions and essay material; and he

ended them feebly. His stories are elaborations with pictorial intent

rather than dramas with culminative movement and sharp outlines.

They are essays rather than short stories.

For the new form there sprang up in the twenties a new vehicle,

the annual. For two decades the book-stands were loaded with

flamboyantly bound gift books—The Token, The Talisman, The Pearl,

The Amaranth, and the others, elaborate Sketch Books varied soon by

echoes from the new romanticism of Europe. Never before such a

gushing of sentiment, of mawkish pathos, of crude terror effects, and

vague Germanic mysticism. From out of it all but a single figure has

survived, the somber Hawthorne  who was genius enough to turn even

the stuff of the annuals into a form that was to persist and dominate.

Hawthorne added soul to the short story and made it a form that could

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be taken seriously even by those who had contended that it was

inferior to the longer forms of fiction. He centered his effort about a

single situation and gave to the whole tale unity of impression. Instead

of elaboration of detail, suggestion; instead of picturing of external

effects, subjective analysis and psychological delineation of character.

Hawthorne was the first to lift the short story into the higher realms of

art.

The forties belong to Poe.   With him came for the first time the

science of the short story, the treatment of it as a distinct art form

with its own rules and its own fields. Laws the form was bound to

have if it was to persist. As the century progressed and as modern

science swept from men’s minds the vague and the generalizing and

the disorderly, there came necessarily the demand for more reality, for

sharper outlines, for greater attention to logical order. The modern

short story is but the fiction natural, and indeed inevitable, in a

scientific age, and Poe was the first to perceive the new tendency and

to formulate its laws.

 In Poe’s opinion the short story owed its vogue in America to

the great number of literary magazines that sprang up during the mid

years of the century. “The whole tendency of the age is

magazineward,” he wrote in the early forties. The quarterlies are quite

out of keeping with the rush of the age. We now demand the legal

artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed,

the readily diffused—in place of the voluminous, the verbose, the

detailed, the inaccessible…. It is a sign of the times—an indication of

an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the condensed, the well

digested, in place of the voluminous—in a word, upon journalism in

lieu of dissertation.” (Bensmaia, 1987, p.331)

Fiction, he contended, to be scientific must be brief, must yield a

totality of impression at a single sitting. The writer must concentrate

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upon a single effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the

outbringing of this effect, he has failed in his first step. In the whole

composition there should be no word written of which the tendency,

direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.

The fifties and sixties in America stand for the dawning of

definiteness, of localized reality, of a feeling left on the reader of

actuality and truth to human life. With Henry James  the period of

transition came to an end.  An age of science could no longer tolerate

the unrelieved black and white of the earlier periods, but demanded

shades, traces of white found even in the black. According to James, a

short story was the analysis of a situation, the psychological

phenomena of a group of men and women at an interesting moment.

Given two, three, four different temperaments, bring them into a

certain situation, and what would be the action and reaction? The story

was a problem to be solved. Little was to be said about the characters:

they were to reveal themselves, gradually, slowly as they do in actual

life, by long continued dialogue, by little unconscious actions and

reactions, by personal peculiarities in dress, manners, movement,

revealed by a thousand subtle hints, descriptive touches, and

insinuations.

The chief criticism of the short stories of James must concern

their spirit rather than their form. The tendency of science has been to

repudiate the spiritual. Romance with intuition in place of sense

perception found at least the heart. With James the short story became

an art form simply, cold and brilliant, a study of the surface of

society, manners, and endless phenomena jotted down in a note-book,

human life from the standpoint of the laboratory and the test tube.

With the eighties the short story came in America fully to its

own. Up to 1884 it had generally been regarded as a magazine form, a

rather trivial thing as compared with the stately novel.

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Beginning about 1898 with the early work of O. Henry and Jack

London, there has come what may be called the last period in the

history of the short story—the work of the present day. It is the period

of magazines devoted wholly to short stories, of syndicates which

handle little else, of text books and college courses on the art of the

short story, and even of correspondence courses in which the art of

making marketable stories may be learned through the mails. In

America the short story seems to have become an obsession.

The period closes with the work of William Sydney Porter, better

known as O. Henry (1862–1910), whose sudden rise and enormous

popularity are one of the romances of the history of the short story.

In his best work—and his tales of the great metropolis are his

best—he is unique. The soul of his art is unexpectedness. Humour at

every turn there is, and sentiment and philosophy and surprise. One

never may be sure of himself. The end is always a sensation. No

foresight may predict it, and the sensation always is genuine.

Whatever else O. Henry was, he was an artist, a master of plot and

diction, a genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His weakness lay in

the very nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent only on amusing

and surprising his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but too often is it

joined to cheapness; art, yet art merging swiftly into caricature. He

slaps the reader on the back and laughs loudly as if he were in a bar-

room. His characters, with few exceptions, are extremes, caricatures.

Even his shop girls, in the limning of whom he did his best work, are

not really individuals; rather are they types, symbols. His work was

literary vaudeville, brilliant, highly amusing, and yet vaudeville.

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1.4 The Difference Between the Essay and the Short Story.

Essay is a literary genre, a small text expressing the individual

author’s point of view. The main task of the essay in comparison with

the short story is the information or explanation, instead of drama

images or just rendering any vital situations. The essay achieves its

purpose with the help of direct author’s statement. For writing the

essay it is not necessary to use invented characters arranged in a

special plot. Nevertheless it is not so necessary to see in absolute

terms the differences between the essay and the story. The stories can

include the certain elements that are close to the essay: the author’s

explanations, disclosing of the background of the characters’ relations,

description. And simultaneously it is possible to find in the essay

some elements of narration, even the characters.

Nevertheless it is possible to make the difference between the

essay and the short story. The basic distinctive feature of the essay is

its brevity. The essay has a certain internal unity, which is usually

difficult for saving in longer texts expressing the author’s point of

view. Essay attempts to answer a question or make an argumentative

statement. It doesn’t mean that essay necessarily has to be factual.

Short story is just a story. The story doesn’t have to do anything and

can be fact or fiction. It doesn’t even have to have a purpose or point,

or even a clear beginning, middle and the end. Essay is usually fact

based and story is fiction based. It is very difficult to make the

difference between the short story and the narrative essay. Although

the narrative essay describes a story from a personal point of view,

uses your personal experience and expresses it in a manner that is

close to tell a story. And one of the main differences contains in the

structure. The essay’s structure is: introduction, body, and conclusion.

It is very strict and do not allow to enter other structural parts. The

story’s structure is: introduction, conflict, climax, resolution. These

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structural parts we can’t find in the essay, even in the narrative essay

that is very close to short story by the style.

The traditional classification of the essays on descriptive,

narrative, reflexive, critical, analytical etc. is rather doubtful in

essence in spite of its convenience. It’s because we can meet two or

more listed characteristics in one text. More exact and convenient

would be division of all essays into personal, subjective essays where

the basic element is disclosing the author’s point of view and

objective, so-called “serious” essays where the personal beginning is

subordinated to a subject of the description or any idea.

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CHAPTER TWO

MARK TWAIN – THE MASTER OF SHORT SKETCHES

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, more widely known as

Mark Twain, was of the “bully breed” which Whitman had prophesied.

Writing outside “the genteel tradition,” he avowedly sought to please

the masses, and he was elected to his high place in American literature

by a tremendous popular vote, which was justified even in the opinion

of severe critics by his exhibition of a masterpiece or so not unworthy

of Le Sage or Cervantes. Time will diminish his bulk as it must that of

every author of twenty-five volumes; but the great public which

discovered him still cherishes most of his books; and his works, his

character, and his career have now, and will continue to have, in

addition to their strictly literary significance, a large illustrative

value, which has been happily emphasized by Albert Bigelow

Twaine’s admirable biography and collection of letters. Mark Twain is

one of American great representative men. He is a fulfilled promise of

American life. He proves the virtues of the land and the society in

which he was born and fostered. He incarnates the spirit of an epoch

of American history when the nation, territorially and spiritually

enlarged, entered lustily upon new adventures. In the retrospect he

looms for us with Whitman and Lincoln, recognizably his countrymen,

out of the shadows of the Civil War, an unmistakable native son of an

eager, westward-moving people—unconventional, self-reliant,

mirthful, profane, realistic, cynical, boisterous, popular, tender-

hearted, touched with chivalry, and permeated to the marrow of his

bones with the sentiment of democratic society and with loyalty to

American institutions.

American writer, journalist, and humorist, who won a worldwide

audience for his stories of youthful adventures of Tom Sawyer and

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Huckleberry Finn. Sensitive to the sound of language, Twain

introduced colloquial speech into American fiction. In “ Green Hills of

Africa”, Ernest Hemingway wrote: "All modern American literature

comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry

Finn..."(Cambridge Encyclopedia, 2)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens the distinguished novelist, short

story writer, essayist, journalist, and literary critic who ranks among

the great figures of American literature.

Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and

incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American

author William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American

literature”.3

During his long writing career, Twain produced a considerable

number of essays, which appeared in various newspapers and in

magazines, including the Galaxy , Harper's , the Atlantic Monthly , and

North American Review . In his “Sandwich Islands' letters” (1873)

Twain described how the missionaries and American government have

corrupted the Hawaiians, “Queen Victoria's Jubilee” (1897) presented

the pomp and pageantry of an English royal procession, and “King

Leopold's Soliloquy” (1905) revealed in a dramatic monologue the

political evils caused by despotism. The King complains: "Blister the

meddlesome missionaries! They write tons of these things. They seem

to be always around, always spying, always eye-witnessing the

happenings; and everything they see they commit to paper... One of

these missionaries saw eighty-one of these hands drying over a fire for

transmission to my officials—and of course they must go and set it

down and print it... nothing is too trivial for them to print..." (Louis,

1992, p.142) Twain's finest satire of imperialism was perhaps “To the

Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), in which the author wrote that the

3 www.wikipedia.org

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people in darkness are beginning to see "more light than... was

profitable for us." (Louis, 1992, p.112)

As Twain's life and career progressed he became increasingly

pessimistic, losing much of the humorous, cocky tone of his earlier

years. More and more of his work expressed the gloomy view that all

human motives are ultimately selfish. Even so Twain is best

remembered as a humorist who used his sharp wit and comic

exaggeration to attack the false pride and self-importance he saw in

humanity.

24

2.1 Mark Twain’s Essays (“Luck” and “How to Tell a Story

and other Essays”).

Mark Twain was great even during his lifetime. He had many

jobs that gave him a good education and varied experiences with many

kinds of people. Something else that helped him achieve greatness in

the world was that he was determined. He set goals to write his books

and set goals to write magazine articles, newspaper articles and other

types of articles. A third thing that helped him to achieve greatness

was that he had perseverance. That quality helped him write books

because he kept on trying to think of varied ways to write his stories

and articles, sketches and essays. Finally, Mark Twain learnt from his

experiences. He learnt early on that his readers liked different writing

styles. He didn’t disappoint them when he wrote his humor, satire, and

adventure stories. If his books got bad ratings, he would know not to

try something different. Some of his characteristics were integrity,

sense-of-humor, and initiative. Mark Twain’s personality was funny,

out-going, and cooperative. His humorous and insightful remarks were

often quoted around the world, both then and now. Mark Twain will be

remembered and quoted for a long time.

The body of work that Twain left behind is immense and varied

—poetry, sketches, journalistic pieces, political essays, novels, and

short stories—all a testament to the diverse talent and energy that used

the folklore of frontier America to create authentic masterpieces of

enduring value. Mark Twain's works are characterized by their

irreverent humor and realism of place and character. His social satires

were biting and a common theme in his works is hatred of oppression

and hypocrites.

"I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only

claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost

daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many

25

years..."(Twain M., 1997, p.6) So begins "How to Tell a Story," the

first in this collection of essays by America's master story-spinner,

Mark Twain. This essay, written by the American author and humorist

in 1897, gives step-by-step instructions in telling the classic 'jump

story' from folk tradition called The Golden Arm, whose variants are

just as popular today. “How to Tell a Story and other Essays” is a

series of essays where the author describes his own writing style,

attacks his idiocy of a fellow author, defends the virtue of a dead

woman, and tries to protect citizens from insults by railroad

conductors.

Mark Twain was a great essayist. He had even invented his own

rules of writing that we can find in a scathing essay "Fennimore

Cooper's Literary Offences”. (Twain M., 1997, p.81)

A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and

shall help develop it.

The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of

corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the

corpses from the others.

The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a

sufficient excuse for being there.

When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall

sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would

be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a

discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the

neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the

reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot

think of anything more to say.

26

When the author describes the character of a personage in his

tale, the conduct and the conversation of that personage shall

justify said description.

When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf,

hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning

of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end

of it.

Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the

author or the people in the tale.

The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities

and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author

must so plausibly to set forth as to make it look possible and

reasonable.

The author shall make the reader love the good people in the tale

and hate the bad ones.

The characters in the tale shall be so clearly defined that the

reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given

emergency.

An author should:

Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Eschew surplusage.

Not omit necessary details.

Avoid slovenliness of forms.

27

Use good grammar.

Employ a simple, straight forward style.

“How to Tell a Story” by Mark Twain is the real example of a

compare and contrast essay. To compare is to explain the similarities

between things; to contrast is to describe their differences. These are

the two sides of a single coin. Comparison and contrast both

emphasize apparent traits, seeing that which is similar and different.

Some argue that the essential nature of human thought itself is the

process of recognizing similarities and differences between

phenomena. Undoubtedly, comparison and contrast is an essential

feature of many rhetorical modes, finding allowing us to describe

things, to define things, to analyze things, to make an argument — to

do, in fact, almost any kind of writing.

When writers compare and/or contrast two phenomena, like

Shakespearean and Italian sonnets, for example, most writers structure

their essays one of four ways.

1. First they compare, then contrast (or vice versa).

2. First they describe one trait; then the other.

3. They write about the comparable and contrastable elements of

each idea.

4. They only compare or only contrast, not both.

Comparison and contrast may be the primary method of

development for an entire essay, but they might also be used as the

method of development within a single paragraph as well. Below are

two paragraphs (really the same paragraph written twice with slightly

28

different comparison patterns of development) about car ownership.

The first is organized by listing the pros first and the cons second, the

alternating pattern of comparison. The second paragraph presents the

pros and cons side by side in succession. Both work. The use of a

transitional device (such as "On the other hand...") is very important

to signal the shift in this pattern of comparison.

1. The "First they compare, then contrast" pattern:

To be able to drive is undoubtedly a useful accomplishment, and the

ownership of a car is for many a fact of life that reaches beyond

convenience to sheer necessity. Furthermore, the owner has the

privilege of travelling in door-to-door comfort, the freedom of

deciding when he will travel, the value of time saved, and (if he cares

for such things) the pride and joy of property. On the other hand, all

possessions are a burden, and a car may rank among the heaviest. It is

expensive to maintain; it makes the owner a prey to vandals, thieves,

and friends who need rides. Finally, cars expose their owners to the

risk of accident.

2. The "First they describe one trait; then the other" pattern:

To be able to drive is undoubtedly a useful accomplishment, and the

ownership of a car is for many a fact of life that reaches beyond

convenience to sheer necessity. On the other hand, all possessions are

a burden, and a car may rank among the heaviest. It is expensive to

maintain; it makes the owner a prey to vandals, thieves, and friends

who need rides. Cars expose their owners to the risk of accident.

Against these considerations, the owner has to weigh the privilege of

travelling in door-to-door comfort, the freedom of deciding when he

will travel, the value of time saved, and (if he cares for such things)

the pride and joy of property.

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Why a writer might choose one pattern of comparison over

another depends, it seems to me, on the overall length of the

comparison. If the writer is to compare only a few points, then a "First

they compare, then contrast" pattern works fine. However, if the list of

comparable points is huge, then the writer might choose the "First they

describe one trait; then the other" alternating pattern for fear that the

reader might not be able to hold all the points about one idea in mind

before getting to the second (or third) idea in the comparison. In such

situations, a side-by-side, alternating pattern seems to work better. Of

course, terms like "few" and "huge" above are indefinite and depend

on the writer's judgment about what the audience is best able to

understand.

Mark Twain in his essay compares humorous, comic and witty

stories and describes the main differences between them. He uses the

method side-by-side comparison and gives only the differences of

these genres of essay. The introduction of the essay is: “There are

several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind – the humorous.”

(Twain M., 1997, p.6) This sentence catches the reader’s interest. The

body of the essay contains from three paragraphs where the writer

gives the main differences between comic, humorous and witty stories.

He contrasts them to each other and identifies the main features of

each kind of the essays. Mark Twain gives the differences of the

humorous stories and the comic and the witty, simultaneously the

author gives the similarities of the witty and comic essays. These

contrasts are vividly represented in the table bellow:

Humorous Essay Comic Essay Witty Essay

American English French

30

Depends for its effect upon the

manner of the telling

Depends upon

the matter

Depends upon

the matter

May be spun out to great length,

may wander around as much as it

pleases, and arrive nowhere in

particular

Must be brief

and end with a

point

Must be brief

and end with a

point

Bubbles gently along Burst Burst

A work of art-high, only an artist

can tell

No art is

necessary,

anybody can do

it

No art is

necessary,

anybody can do

it

Told gravely The teller tells

you beforehand

The teller tells

you beforehand

Finishes with a nub, point, snapper The teller does

not stur the

nub; he shouts

it at you –

every time

The teller does

not stur the

nub; he shouts

it at you –

every time

Table 1

His statements Mark Twain exemplified. For example, when he

speaks about the endings of the essays he gives the following example:

“Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated

audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocence

surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan

31

Setchell used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it to-

day.”(Twain M., 1997, p. 8).

Conclusion of the essay includes the examples of the humorous

essays as the proof of the author’s statements.

32

2.2 Humorous Essays by Mark Twain.

Reading humorous stories is one of the most worthwhile pursuits

in life. Amusing stories make one laugh aloud, ludicrous tales bring

out the suppressed chuckle and witty accounts make one smile. In his

essay “How to tell a Story” Mark Twain says that the most difficult

kind of stories are humorous and gives the certain arguments to

demonstrate it. Then the author shows the reader the real proof of his

statement through the humorous essays “The Wounded Soldier”, “The

Golden Arm”, ‘Mental Telegraphy Again” and “The Invalid Story”.

We have to identify what is humour, what are its postulates and main

features before making the analysis of the Mark Twain’s humorous

essays.

Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the ability of

people, objects, situations or words to evoke feelings of amusement or

happiness in people. A sense of humour is the ability to experience

humour, although the extent to which an individual will find

something humorous depends on a host of variables, including

geographical location, culture, and maturity, level of education,

intelligence, and context. For example, young children may possibly

favour slapstick, such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons

(e.g. Tom and Jerry). Satire may rely more on understanding the target

of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences.

Non-satirical humour can be specifically termed "recreational

drollery".

Humour can occur when an alternative or surprising shift in

perception or answer is given, that still shows relevance and can

explain a situation.

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Humour can occur when we laugh at something that points out

another's errors, lack of intelligence or unfortunate

circumstances, granting a sense of superiority.

Humour can occur when sudden relief occurs from a tense

situation "humourific" as formerly applied in comedy referred

to the interpretation of the sublime and the ridiculous. In this

context, humour is often a subjective experience as it depends

on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be

effective.4

Comic books are said to be at least, as old as movies. Their first

beginnings are in the beginning of XXth Century. The comic book was

initially a way in which illustrators could present new ways of graphic

and visual communication and expression. Many times when people

think of the earliest comics they in vision the prehistory cave

paintings of early man or the work of Egyptian hieroglyphics on

temple walls, the prehistoric these assumptions are not far off from

what we deem as the modern day comic. Time artwork and hieroglyphs

are in fact a visual group of narratives told in pictorial format much

the same way a comic is read. The existence of words was not

necessary because ancient peoples often used symbols to represent the

action of the sequence. Later, at more sophisticated times letters were

soon added, give to convey more information and enhance the quality

of the story being told. One factor in particular that influenced the

comic growth was the improvement of press and printing technology .

In the beginning, the journal “The Modern Comic” began in

Joseph Pulitzer's New York World on February 17, 1895. The comic,

drawn by Richard F. Outcault, was based on the life of Mickey Dugan,

an Irish immigrant child in the city. Although the strip had no name,

4 www.wikipedia.org

34

people have dubbed it the "Yellow Kid" because the nightshirt worn

by Mickey Dugan was the projection for an experiment in yellow ink

by the newspaper. Eventually the comic came to be known as "Hogan's

Alley." Soon comics were recognized for the selling potential and

were published in newspapers all over the world. After the success of

the World, a competitor, William Randolph Herst of the New York

Journal, hired Outcault to draw Hogan's Alley for Hearst's Journal.

The World continued publication of the strip using a new artist, and

both papers were featuring the "Yellow kid." This led to people

referring to the two papers as the yellow papers. And the battle

between the press lords became more intense. Hereunto, the history of

comics and humorous essay traces deep roots. At present, we have the

modern and well known humorous essay, which was hardly integrated

through disputes and “fights”.

Thus, a humorous essay is a short nonfiction composition in

which a writer presents a subject in a humorous way. The humorous

essays by Mark Twain present a series of anecdotes and the author

used “the comic method… which has been popular all over the world

for twelve or fifteen hundred years.”(Twain M., 1997, p.8) Further by

the exemplifying some anecdotes Mark Twain successfully shows how

a writer, an artist has to tell the humorous stories. In his stories Mark

Twain describes the soldier or the invalid using an outstanding style.

These anecdotes and writer’s skill make the essay like a funny story

that makes people to laugh. Thereto, a humorous essay is a nonfiction

composition that gives a writer’s thoughtful but humorous view of

subject. Although the subject may be serious, its treatment is

lighthearted and intended to make the reader laugh. Writers of

humorous essays amuse their audiences in different ways.

To achieve the humorous effect Mark Twain uses the colloquial

words. His story “The Golden Arm” is told in a colloquial speech

35

“Once ‘pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, en he live ‘way out in

de prairie all ‘lone by hisself, ‘cep’n he had a wife”(Tawin M., 1997,

p.10) that makes the reader to understand the homour and seems as a

real fact.

2.3 “Luck” by Mark Twain as an Example of the Narrative

Essay.

"Luck" is an 1886 short story by Mark Twain which was first

published in 1891 in Harper's Magazine. Even fans of Twain are

frequently unfamiliar with "Luck," a work so little known that its plot

bears retelling. The story traces the career of a military hero from his

modest beginnings at Woolwich to his triumph in battle against the

Russians. Years after the war's end a celebratory dinner is held to

honor the famous general, and it is at this point that the tale begins.

During the banquet the narrator, who has been joining in the chorus of

adulation, meets an old acquaintance: a clergyman of undoubted

probity, who dissents from the view that the general is a military

genius. Surprised and intrigued, the narrator asks for more detail,

which the clergyman agrees to supply a few days later. The rest of the

short tale is told retrospectively by this clergyman, who becomes the

de facto narrator from this point on. The clergyman had been the

general's tutor when he was a cadet at Woolwich, and had followed

him to the Crimea. The burden of his message is that the general, far

from deserving his fame, was merely the beneficiary of an incredible

string of lucky coincidences.

As one of the modes of expository writing, narrative offers us the

opportunity to think and write about ourselves, to explain how our

experiences lead to some important realization or conclusion about our

lives or about the world, in general. Each of us has had meaningful

36

experiences that have taught us lessons about ourselves or others or

the world. Through the narrative essay, we have the chance to record

and share those experiences as a means to substantiate our new

understanding.

To write a narrative essay, we need to think about a moment

worth sharing and to think about finding the significant, salient point

in that moment. To do this, we should think about the new insights or

awareness we gained for ourselves (insights that might be relevant to

others as well). Finally, writers incorporate details which will make

the incident real for readers.

Also, a narrative paragraph can be an effective, interesting way

to integrate significant background information into a variety of

different essay types. Even if the essay as a whole primarily uses

another method of development, the narrative paragraph can be

incorporated into an essay to support a topic sentence in a particular

paragraph and to establish a bit of ethical appeal at the same time.

However, whether you use narrative as the rhetorical mode of the

essay as a whole or just of a single paragraph within an essay, there

are some conventions and principles of the narrative that readers

commonly expect.

Conventions of Narratives. When writing a narrative essay,

remember that narratives (like all genres) have predictable patterns.

1. Narratives are usually written from perspective of the writer

him/herself (the first person singular, i.e., I). However, writers

do use third person pronouns (he, she, or it) occasionally. Which

"grammatical person" (as this is called technically) you use most

often is a function of whose perspective is being captured in the

narrative. If it 's your story, use I; if it 's a story about what

37

happened to a friend or group of friends (including yourself), use

she or he or we , as appropriate. That's logical and simple. Yet

writers can and do play with perspective for stylistic effect. If

you begin your narrative in the first person singular, say, use that

throughout. In other words, don't switch your point of view mid-

essay.

2. Speaking of narrators, although the first or third person singular

is the most common narrative voice in a narrative essay, other

possibilities exist as well. Consider using interpolated tale (a

"twice told tale") to add some flair.

3. Since narrative essays include a story, the essay should use the

conventions found in any story: a plot (telling your readers what

is happening), with explanation of the setting and the characters;

a climax (telling your readers the important realization, the peak

experience related to your thesis); and an ending (explaining how

the incident resolved itself, also alluding to how the narrative's

thesis comes to its full realization).

4. Speaking of plot, remember that most stories follow a simple

time line in laying out the narrative. Chronological order is the

rule. So feel free to break that rule, when appropriate, if you can

think of a way use a different time order to enhance your story.

5. Speaking of characters, it is often true that the most memorable

characters are those who have flaws. So feel to use stories that

reveal human weakness as well.

6. Narratives depend upon concrete, specific details to support their

theses. These details need to create a unified, dominant

impression. (Kies, 2007)

38

Principles of Narratives. Telling a story and writing a

narrative essay is not the same thing at all.

1. Build your essay around a central point, a main idea that your

story then supports and explains. This is crucial, and perhaps the

defining characteristic between a narrative-as-story and a

narrative-as-essay. This main idea will be the thesis of your

essay, will say something that the story itself then illuminates

and shows to be true. This generalization can be quite personal;

it does not have to capture a truth about humanity as a whole or

about the essence of the human condition. It simply needs to

capture a truth about your life and use the story, the narrative

experience, to illustrate its importance to you. In this way, it

then has meaning to the readers as well. Remember that

ultimately you are writing an essay , not simply telling a story.

2. Remember to incorporate details of your story that not only

illuminate your thesis, but also engage your readers'

imaginations and make the story "real" for them as well.

(Kies,2007)

Mark Twain introduces the main character of his story in the first

paragraph. From the very beginning the major character Lieutenant-

General Lord Arthur Scoresby is portrayed by the author as a very

prominent person. To convey his statements the author uses the row of

synonyms ("illustrious, renowned" ), which represent one of the

characteristic features of the narrative essay. Generally, the first

paragraph of the story describes the significance of the main character,

his sublimity over other common people. That is the purpose why the

author adheres to periphrases: a demi-god. Besides, the reader grasps

the idea about the narrator's attitude towards this man. This is

admiration and worship, so deep and sincere that no more was required

39

to the narrator but to keep silence and have a chance to see this

person. Mark Twain uses the first person to render the story and to

show his point of view. “There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I

had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years

before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean

battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated.” (Twain M., 1997, p.3)

To demonstrate the attitude the author uses the synonymic row:

"scanning, searching, noting" and repetition with polysyndeton "to

look, and look and look". Moreover, describing the qualities of the

major hero the narrator adheres to abstract nouns with a very positive

connotation which create an image of a very pleasant and respected

person: "the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity, the simple

honesty".

The author fills his story with details (Woolwich, London, the

Crimean battlefield, the Crimean war, and the Russian army ) so, the

reader can imagine it as real fact from the history. Mark Twain’s style

to tell the story makes it an outstanding fiction product. Instead of

using formal neutral words to describe the character and the events he

used the expressive words. For example: “ The battle was awfully hot ;

the allies were steadily giving way all over the field.”(Twain M.,

1997, p.4) Instead of the underlined word combination the person can

describe the battle in other words more formal as “the battle was

terrible” . However Mark Twain uses exactly that description to show

the reader that the battle was something more terrible and extremely.

Thus we can conclude that the “Luck” represents a real example of the

narrative essay where the author uses all characteristic features for

this genre of literature. In addition we have to mention that the

narrative essay is the closest type of essay to the story. It has the same

features as the story and it is very difficult to make the differences

between them. However, the difference exists. It hides in special

40

structure of the essay. Nevertheless that the narrative essay has the

same structural elements as the short story its structure is more

strictly. Any narrative essay is shorter than a story. Thus, the brief of

the essay is one of the distinctive features of this type.

41

CHAPTER THREE

O. HENRY AND HIS SHORT STORIES

3.1 Short Stories by O.Henry.

O.Henry is a pseudonym of William Sydney Porter  American

short-story writer whose tales romanticized the commonplace in

particular the life of ordinary people in New York City. His stories

expressed the effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim

or ironic, and often had surprise endings, a device that became

identified with his name and cost him critical.

O. Henry stories are famous for their surprise endings, to the

point that such an ending is often referred to as an "O. Henry ending."

He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both

authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more

playful and optimistic.

Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early years

of the 20th century. Many take place in New York City, and deal for

the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, and waitresses.

His stories are also well known for witty narration.

Fundamentally a product of his time, O. Henry's work provides

one of the best English examples of catching the entire flavor of an

age. Whether roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of

the "gentle grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and wealth

in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry had an inimitable hand for

isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible

economy and grace of language.

Some of his best and least-known work resides in the collection

Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories which each explore some

individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American

town while each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating

42

back one to another in a complex structure which slowly explicates its

own background even as it painstakingly erects a town which is one of

the most detailed literary creations of the period.

“The Four Million” is another collection of stories. It opens with

a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only 'Four

Hundred' people in New York City who were really worth noticing.

But a wiser man has arisen—the census taker—and his larger estimate

of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these

little stories of the 'Four Million.'" (Henry,O., 1953, p.28)

To O. Henry, everyone in New York counted. He had an obvious

affection for the city, which he called "Bagdad-on-the-Subway," and

many of his stories are set there—but others are set in small towns and

in other cities.

Among his stories are:

"A Municipal Report" which opens by quoting Frank Norris:

"Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or

Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the

United States that are 'story cities'—New York, of course, New

Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco." (Henry, O., 1953,

p.32) Thumbing his nose at Norris, O. Henry sets the story in

Nashville.

"The Gift of the Magi" about a young couple who are short of

money but desperately wants to buy each other Christmas gifts.

Unbeknownst to Jim, Della sells her most valuable possession,

her beautiful hair, in order to buy a platinum fob chain for

Jim's watch; while unbeknownst to Della, Jim sells his own

most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for

Della's hair. The essential premise of this story has been

copied, re-worked, parodied, and otherwise re-told countless

times in the century since it was written.

43

"The Ransom of Red Chief", in which two men kidnap a boy of

ten. The boy turns out to be so bratty and obnoxious that the

desperate men ultimately pay the boy's father $250 to take him

back.

"The Cop and the Anthem" about a New York City hobo named

Soapy, who sets out to get arrested so he can spend the cold

winter as a guest of the city jail. Despite efforts at petty theft,

vandalism, disorderly conduct, and "mashing," Soapy fails to

draw the attention of the police. Disconsolate, he pauses in

front of a church, where an organ anthem inspires him to clean

up his life—whereupon he is promptly arrested for loitering.

"A Retrieved Reformation", which tells the tale of safecracker

Jimmy Valentine, recently freed from prison. He goes to a town

bank to check it over before he robs it. As he walks to the door,

he catches the eye of the banker's beautiful daughter. They

immediately fall in love and Valentine decides to give up his

criminal career. He moves into the town, taking up the identity

of Ralph Spencer, a shoemaker. Just as he is about to leave to

deliver his specialized tools to an old associate, a lawman who

recognizes him arrives at the bank. Jimmy and his fiancée and

her family are at the bank, inspecting a new safe, when a child

accidentally gets locked inside the airtight vault. Knowing it

will seal his fate, Valentine opens the safe to rescue the child.

However, the lawman lets him go.

"After Twenty Years", set on a dark street in New York,

focuses on a man named "Silky" Bob who is fulfilling an

appointment made 20 years ago to meet his friend Jimmy at a

restaurant. A beat cop questions him about what he is doing

there. Bob explains, and the policeman leaves. Later, a second

policeman comes up and arrests Bob. He gives Bob a note, in

44

which the first policeman explains that he was Jimmy, come to

meet Bob, but he recognized Bob as a wanted man. Unwilling

to arrest his old friend, he went off to get another officer to

make the arrest.

"Compliments of the Season" describes several characters'

misadventures during Christmas.

45

3.2 Descriptive Essays.

O.Henry is well-known as a short story teller. However knowing

the close connection of short stories and essays we can considerate

that O.Henry’s stories are essays too. The most spread type of essays

that the author uses in his works are narrative and descriptive one.

What is the descriptive essay? The key word here is "descriptive" . The

main goal in a descriptive piece of writing is to describe something,

someone, or some place in a way that shows the readers, rather than

tells . This is done by using lots of descriptive language and details.

Descriptive writing can be done in an essay format (5 paragraphs!), or

even as a story or a poem.

A descriptive essay mirrors the mood of the writer and conjures

images that breathe. It is often regarded as the most structured form of

writing as it is associated with the ability to transfer emotions to the

reader through the use of words. A good essay arouses the reader’s

senses and impacts on his mind evoking the correct response. The

writer succeeds if he is able to capture the reader’s attention and

retain it till the end. Although one can describe anything under the sun

and palm it off as a descriptive essay, the description must relate to

something of consequence, in the sense that it must be purposeful.

Anything insignificant would merely amount to a mundane exercise of

writing for the sake of putting something down on paper. Writing must

always be directed towards the reader and hence the writer must have

a good reason for describing something or someone. An introduction

or a backdrop provides the correct setting for the rest of the essay. A

good descriptive essay should lure the reader and entice him to read

without stopping. While details are important, the way they are

presented is going to decide whether the readers opt in or out.

46

Visual skills, words relating to sound, smell and taste

predominantly used tend to make the essay real.

Words relating to touch and inner emotions are it disgust or

admiration, love or hatred convey to the reader the intensity and range

of feeling. A wider spectrum encompassing all the senses has a

tremendous impact. Nonchalant use of nouns in a general way waters

down the feelings conveyed. Specificity is the order of the day. Active

verbs help the reader to visualize the nature of emotions rather than

indicating the characters or scenes in an inanimate and passive

manner. Vivid use of words and verbs are effective.

The tone of the essay should be gradually built so that there is

one strong dominant emotion. If the purpose of the essay is to cause

concern or arouse fear, then the trend must be set in the introduction

itself. It prepares the reader for stronger and worse emotions to

follow. Sometimes it helps to list all the words associated with a

particular emotion and then try to use as many as you can without

being redundant examples. Just as the introduction coaxes the reader

into entering a particular world, so too must the body of the essay

ensure that he does not beat a hasty retreat.   In the conclusion, the

reader must be drawn within the purview of emotions making him an

integral part.

The descriptive essay can either be objective or subjective by

nature. What is going to determine the outcome is the kind of emotion

that needs to be evoked. An objective essay is precise and clinical in

approach while a subjective essay has a personal touch. Whether it is

one or the other, the body of the essay needs to be correctly

segmented. While giving details, set the different aspects off in

different paragraphs depending on its content. This way the essay

reads well, has coherence and is meaningful. Care must be taken to

47

have some sort of logical pattern with important details preceding

minor ones, or broader details preceding specific ones. There are many

ways to deal with the presentation, so choose the one that is most

effective.

There are several methods one may choose to describe something

descriptive essays:

usage of vivid, fresh and varied language;

usage of bright examples;

usage of interesting comparisons ;

usage of variety of terms;

usage of images that appeal to senses;

usage of senses;

transition of something ordinary into extraordinary;

effective usage of time;

free play of feelings and emotions.

Principles of a descriptive essay :

it makes clear dominant impression;

it can be either objective or subjective;

its purpose is to make the reader represent clearly the things

being described.

Points to consider:

stick to a clear structure of one’s descriptive essay, it should

consist of introduction (working from general to specific,

containing a thesis statement), main body (having several

paragraphs in which your topic is described) and conclusion (in

which you restate your thesis in other words and conclude your

thoughts);

48

the author has to try to select some extraordinary traits of the

subject described, pick something unusual to capture the reader’s

attention;

the essayist has to give as much details as possible, describe

everything as if hears hear and sees it himself;

the author must use the words that appeal to the reader’s senses;

he/she has to focus his/her descriptions on sight, sound, smell,

touch and taste;

the author moves the reader through space and time

chronologically;

the author uses a then-and-now approach to show things in their

developing or fall

Moreover, one of the best distinctive features that no one has to

forget is creativeness and the author has to remember that the basic

rule of descriptive essays : SHOW, DON’T TELL!

“Girl” by O.Henry is an example of descriptive essay. Here one

of the descriptive paragraphs from his story: “ Vivienne was about

twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her hair was a ruddy

golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass shining with its own

lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In perfect harmony were her

ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes that looked upon the

world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or the pixie of an

undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and yet

possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her

Northern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed

to be something of the tropics in her -- something of languor in the

droop of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of

satisfaction and comfort in the mere act of breathing -- something that

seemed to claim for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and

49

be admired equally with a rare flower or some beautiful, milk-white

dove among its sober-hued companions.”(O.Henry, 1953, p.12)

3.3 Argumentative Essays.

Quite unlike the ordinary meaning of the word, argument as a

term in rhetoric refers to the process of reasoning by advancing proof.

Indeed, academic argument can seem dispassionate if one expects that

all argument is done with raised voices and heated tempers. Though

academic argument often does grow very acrimonious, it is more often

the product of careful research and thoughtful consideration of all the

facts that one can acquire about the issue. For centuries therefore

rhetoricians advocated the writing of an argumentative essay as a

means of learning how to think. Argument demands that the writer

examine a belief by testing the strength of the reasons for holding such

a belief. Argument of this kind forms a "dialectical structure," a

dialog, within the essay itself. In this dialog, the writer explores

several sides of the issue under consideration with the readers in an

attempt to demonstrate why one perspective is the most enlightened.

The writer's analysis of the issues (his/her evaluations of the claims,

evidence, assumptions, hidden arguments, and inherent contradictions)

leads the writer to champion one perspective of the subject at hand,

even though reasonable, thoughtful, intelligent people advocate

different perspectives.

The art of argumentation is not an easy skill to acquire. Many

people might think that if one simply has an opinion, one can argue it

effectively, and these folks are always surprised when others don't

agree with them because their logic seems so correct.In short, the

writer of an argument essay has several goals: the primary goals is to

50

persuade and move the audience to accept his/her position on an issue,

but that is often a very difficult challenge. A secondary, and more

modest goal, is for the writer to articulate why she/he chooses the

stance that she/he does on an issue. The secondary goal recognizes the

fact that to persuade is a difficult objective but that at least the writer

can explain his/her reasoning behind his/her position.

Some confusion may occur between the argumentative essay and

the expository essay. These two genres are similar, but the

argumentative essay differs from the expository essay in the amount of

pre-writing (invention) and research involved. The argumentative

essay is commonly assigned as a capstone or final project in first year

writing or advanced composition courses and involves lengthy,

detailed research. Expository essays involve less research and are

shorter in length.

Argumentative essay assignments generally call for extensive

research of literature or previously published material. Argumentative

assignments may also require empirical research where the student

collects data through interviews, surveys, observations, or

experiments. Detailed research allows the student to learn about the

topic and to understand different points of view regarding the topic so

that she/he may choose a position and support it with the evidence

collected during research. Regardless of the amount or type of

research involved, argumentative essays must establish a clear thesis

and follow sound reasoning.

For those reasons, many rhetoricians describe the argument as a

dialog, set in writing, between the writer and the readers. In this

dialog, the writer introduces his/her subject, makes his/her claim,

51

discusses any necessary background information, and then presents the

evidence for the position and in rebuttal to other positions.

Writers use different patterns to organize their thoughts as they

compose the argument. Essentially, the two most common patters of

development are the "clustering" and the "alternating" patterns of

presenting evidence. In the clustering pattern, the writer collects the

evidence in one place, the objections in another section, and the

rebuttal in a third section. In the alternating pattern, the writer shifts

between evidence, objection, and rebuttal for each separate piece of

evidence before moving to the next piece of evidence.

Reading through the lists above, you can see the give-and-take,

the back-and-forth nature of the argument's dialectic.

The single most common misunderstanding in composing an

argument is to assume that there is no difference between an argument

and an opinion. "But it 's all opinion!" we might rightly point out, and,

yes, it is true that all claims start out as opinions. (Columbus was

thought mad for suggesting that the world was round, remember. The

ancients argued that the earth was the center of the universe.) At first

glance, it may seem that argumentative essays are "merely" asking you

to write your opinion, since there may be no single "correct" way to

answer the crucial questions raised by controversial subjects. The

crucial difference is that an argument should present a claim (an

opinion) supported by reasoning and evidence, which persuades your

reader that the thesis your paper advances is a valid one. An opinion is

an assertion that is not supported by logic or evidence.

In the “Newspaper Story” the O.Henry uses and the elements of

the argumentative essay beginning every paragraph with a specific

words cue for this type of essay: the first, the second, and the third”.

52

For example we can find the next paragraph: “ The third was an

eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and aided in

everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public guardians

and servants.”(O.Henry, 1953, p. 35)

In the story “The Girl and the Habit” O.Henry uses a concrete

introduction which determines the whole theme of the story: “ HABIT -

a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent

repetition.”(O.Henry, 1953, p. 16) Further the story is developed and

the author proves his statement giving arguments and descriptions.

“The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one.

To that one we are driven for our moral theme.” Arguments:

“When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the

parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life they

reproached us for trying to imitate Henry George, George

Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving Bacheller. We wrote of the

West and the East, and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry

James. We wrote from our heart--and they said something about a

disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew or--er--yes,

Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the

inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall,

we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable

vade mecum--the unabridged dictionary.” (O.Henry, 1953, p.16)

Thus we have to mention that O.Henry did not create using only

one type of the essay either the narrative or descriptive. The art of

O.Henry’s writing consists in combining different types of essays. To

give the argument and further to describe it the writer uses different

techniques and characteristic essay features.

53

To use a special vivid and expressive language is one of the

characteristics of the descriptive essay’s features. O.Henry

successfully coped with this task. O.Henry manipulated the language

in his stories. He looked disrespectfully at syntax; he skipped from

dialect to dialect; he scorned custom; he dried the ink of English and

foreign words with the same blotter. He was an impartial to literary,

colloquial, and slang expressions as an unabridged dictionary. His

stories record the idioms of Texas and Central West, and New York;

they make use of the professional jargon of the druggist, the cowboy,

and the crook. O.Henry toyed with words from Latin, German,

Spanish, and French. O.Henry’s language is as surprising as his plots

and deserves the attention of the readers. One of the examples of the

O.Henry’s expressive language is the sentence from his story “The

Theory and the Hound”: “A woman with a comely and mundane

countenance passed us, holding in leash a wheezing, vicious,

waddling, brute of a yellow pug.”(O.Henry, 1953, p.18)

Thus making a conclusion we can say that the basic type of the

essays that we met in our research is the narrative and the descriptive

essays. Such authors’ choice we can explain by the certain closeness

of the essay and the short story. Moreover, fiction created by O.Henry

is basically treated as short stories. However, we have found out and

the structural elements of the essay in his creation such as concrete

introduction, using the arguments and others.

54

CONCLUSION

In our research we have addressed to the theme of essay and tried

to exemplify the usage of this genre in the creation of American

writers. Essay as a separate literary genre appeared in the USA in the

XVIII-th century and developed very quickly. The main themes of the

essays of that period were politics and religion. Although President

Franklin combined successfully the personal elements and the political

satire in his essays. At the beginning of the XIX-th century the

subjective essay has bloomed in the creation of Ch.Lam, W.Hazlitt and

others. This period is also characteristic with appearance of essays in

the magazines and newspapers. The essay has lost its personal

intonation and turned up into articles. That is why the majority of

people consider that essay is a specifically genre for journalists. The

Victorian Era brought up so-called “serious” and “formal” essays. At

the end of the XIX-th century have appeared essays by Mark Twain.

He introduced a new humorous variety of subjective essay. His essays

were pseudo-autobiographical with using a specific narration. This

type of essay with its special style and language influenced on the

creation of many authors of the XX-th century.

During our research:

We have identified the role of essay in the world literature and

have determined its place beginning from the background notes.

It was made with the purpose to understand what really the

essay is.

We have identified the main types of the essay and the main

features of this literary genre. The main types of essay are:

descriptive essays, narrative essays, compare and contrast

55

essays, persuasive essays, expository essays, and argumentative

essays.

We decided to follow the evolution of the short story writing in

American literature and have found out that its history is not so

long. However, exactly the Americans brought that specific

genre in our literature because in Russia and Moldova essays

were not in a spread usage.

It was very necessary to find out the main differences between

the essay and the short story; and we have found out that the

basic distinctive feature of the essay is its brevity, the essay has

a certain internal unity, attempts to answer the question or make

an argumentative statement. In contrast, short story does not

posses these peculiarities of the essays, it is just a story, it can

be a fact or a fiction, short story’s structure is not so strict and

clear.

The most two appropriate genres are the short story and the

narrative essay. It is very diffeicult to find the differences

between them. However, we have identified that the main

difference is in the structure. Essay has a certain structure the

short story is not so obligated to follow the certain structutre.

We have compared three types of essays (humorous, comic, and

witty) and have identified the main distinctive features of them.

We have determined that one of the basic distinctive features is

the structure and the length of the work. The essay and the short

story have characteristic structure, and the essay is shorter than

the short story.

We have also determined that narrative and descriptive essays

are the closest types of essays to the short stories.

We have studied the works by Mark Twain: “How to Tell a

Story and Other Essays” and “Luck”.

56

We have determined that Mark Twain invented a new, special

type of essay – humorous essay. He shows the main differences

between the humorous essay and comic and witty essays.

“Luck” is a narrative essay where the author uses all specifical

features of this type of essay.

Analyzing the stories by Mark Twain we have identified that he

used the humorous essay during his work. Thus, appears the new

type of essays – humorous. Humorous essay is a short nonfiction

composition in which a writer presents a subject in a humorous

way. The humorous essays by Mark Twain present a series of

anecdotes and the author used “the comic method… which has

been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred

years.”(Twain M., 1997, p.8)

In his essay “How to tell a Story” Mark Twain says that the

most difficult kind of stories are humorous and gives the certain

arguments to demonstrate it. Then the author shows the reader

the real proof of his statement through the humorous essays.

The author gives the main differences between humour and

comic; determines the main peculiarities of humorous, comic,

and witty essays.

O.Henry is considered one of the best short story tellers.

However, we have identified that in his stories the author uses

the elements of the descriptive and argumentative essays.

The basic type of the essays that we met in our research of the

stories by O.Henry is the narrative and the descriptive essays.

Such authors’ choice we can explain by the certain closeness of

the essay and the short story. Moreover, fiction created by

O.Henry is basically treated as short stories.

57

We have found out and the structural elements of the O.Henry’s

essay which contain: concrete introduction, using the arguments

and others.

Studying the material of the essay writing we have come to a

conclusion that this theme is not adequately explored. The majority of

literary critics interpret the stories by Mark Twain and O.Henry as a

short story. However we consider that these stories belong to the essay

genre. Thereof this conclusion, we can state that in our days, the

accomplishing of the term “essay” is totally different and is

continuous from the past and old thinking. It is the influence of the

XXIst century and we think this is a very positive trend.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

English Literature:

1. Longo, Lucas. “O.Henry, Short Story Writer”, 1982

2. “The Cambridge History of English and American Literature” An

Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. Book III. Vol. VI

[www.bartelby.org]

3. Beaujour, Michel. Miroirs d'encre: Rhétorique de l'autoportrait.

Paris: Seuil, 1980. [Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait. Trans.

Yara Milos. New York: NYU Press, 1991].

4. Bensmaïa, Reda. The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective

Text. Trans. Pat Fedkiew. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota

Press, 1987.

5. Beebe Lucius . Comstock Commotion: The Story of the

Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News. Standford:

Standford University Press, 1954

6. Daniel Kies, “The Narrative Essay” March 21, 2007. [on-line

http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/comp1/narrativ.htm ]

7. Everett Emerson. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000

8. Gregg Camfield. The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2002

9. Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, Mississippi Writings (Library of

America, 1982)

10. Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad &

Roughing It (Library of America, 1984)

11. James M. Cox. Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Princeton

University Press, 1966

59

12. Jennifer Jordan-Henley, “A Brief Guide to Writing Descriptive

Essays”, 1998.

13. Jesse Seldess, “How to Write a Descriptive Essay”

14. J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds. The Mark Twain

Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1993

15. Hamlin L. Hill, ed. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age and Later

Novels (Library of America, 2002)

16. Henry, O. “A Blackjack Bargainer”. An Antology of Famous

American Stories, 1953

17. Huxley A. “Collected Essays”. (preface) New York: Bantam

Books, 1964 –p.4-12

18. Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, and Geoffrey C. Ward, Mark Twain:

An Illustrated Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001

19. Louis J. Budd, ed. Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches,

Speeches & Essays 1891-1910 (Library of America, 1992)

20. Montaigne, Michel de. Trans. M. A. Screech. London: Penguin ,

“The Complete Essays” , 2003 (1987), p. 1284

21. “The College Admission Essay: Tips and Advice from the

Experts at “Essay Edge” – Paper work

22. R. Kent Rasmussen. Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A

Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On

File, 2007. (Revised edition of Mark Twain A to Z)

23. R. Kent Rasmussen, ed. The Quotable Mark Twain: His Essential

Aphorisms, Witticisms and Concise Opinions. Chicago:

Contemporary Books, 1997

24. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ed. A Historical Guide to Mark Twain.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

25. Susan K. Harris, ed. Mark Twain, Historical Romances (Library

of America, 1994) Twain, Mark. “A Burleque Biography”.

Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales by Mark Twain, 1961

60

26. Theodor W. Adorno, The Essay as Form in: Theodor W. Adorno,

The Adorno Reader, Blackwell Publishers 2000

27. Twain, Mark. “Luck”. American Claimant and other Stories and

Sketches, 1797

28. William Dean Howells . My Mark Twain. Mineloa, New York:

Dover Publications, 1997

Russian literature:

29. Алехина Ю. «Сочинение по обществознанию? Почему бы и

нет! История и обществознание для школьников». 2002. №2.

30. «Зарубежные писатели. Библиографический словарь» - М.:

«Просвещение», 1997 (часть 2)

31. «История зарубежной литературы конца XIX – начала ХХ в.»

Учебник для филол. факультетов ун-тов. – М.: «Высшая

школа», 1978. – 470 с.

32. Карнаух Н.Л., Щербина И.В.   Письменные работы по

литературе. 9-11 классы. М., 2002. Раздел «Эссе как вид

творческой работы»

33. Киприяноеа Е.В. Как научиться писать эссе по

обществознанию на «отлично»? «Преподавание истории и

обществознания в школе». 2003 г. №9.

34. Мендельсон М. «Марк Твен». – М.: «Высшая школа», 1958. –

382 с.

35. Митрофанов К.Г., Шаповал В.В. Как написать реферат по

истории на «отлично» М, 2003 г. Раздел «Эссе как жанр

письменной творческой работы».

36. О'Генри. «Избранные произведения». – М., 1991

37. Смелкова З.С., Ассуирова Л.В., Саввова М.Р., Сальникова

О.А. Риторические Основы журналистики. Работа над жанрами

газеты. М. 2002 г. (Глава «Эссе».)

61

38. Твен, Марк. «Избранные произведения». – М.: «Водолей»,

1992. – 359 с.

39. Шубинский В. Взгляд и нечто, Новое литературное

обозрение. 2001 г. №52.

40. Эпштейн М.Л. Опыты об эссе, Опыты-Ed. СПб.; Париж, 1994

г. №1.

Internet Resources on Essay Writing:

41. www.geocities.com/swaisman

42. www.twain.classicauthors.net

43. www.online-literature.com

44. http://search.essayfind.com:9000/cgi bin/query?

mss=essayfinder&q=+comic+essay - information about comic

essays

45. http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/72139.html

46. http://depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks/writing/

essay.html#descriptive – general information about descriptive

essays

47. http://www.wikipedia.org – general information about essays

48. http://www.rscc.cc.tn.us/owl&writingcenter/OWL/Narration.html

- information about narrative essays

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APPENDIX

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY (46)

COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY (47)

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ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY (47)

Clustering Pattern

of Development

Alternating Pattern

of Development

1. Statement and brief explanation of the question or problem, justifying its importance if necessary.

2. Statement of the position you are advocating — the claim.

3. The evidence (reasons) for the position are presented next.

o The writer adds as much evidence as s/he can muster to support the validity of his/her point of view.

o The writer often organizes the evidence to provide for the greatest impact on the reader.

4. Objection to this evidence follow. o The writer presents the

opposing points of view and the evidence/reasoning behind the other perspectives.

o The writer often acknowledges the validity of other viewpoints and weaknesses in his/her own perspective. This can actually help the writer gain ethical appeal from the

1. Statement and brief explanation of the question or problem, justifying its importance if necessary.

2. Statement of the position you are advocating — the claim.

3. First evidence (reason) for the position.

o Objection to this evidence. o Reply to this objection. o Continued objections and

replies until all material related to this evidence is exhausted.

4. Second evidence for the position. o Objection to this second

piece of evidence.o Reply to this objection. o Continued objection and

replying until all material related to this evidence is exhausted.

5. Continuing evidence for the position, until all the evidence has been presented and tested,

o followed by objections ando replies until all material is

exhausted. 6. Conclusion: assess the original

64

readers.5. Replies to these objections begin.

o The writer uses evidence and reasoning to explain why the opposition's perspective is not valid.

o The writer may even acknowledge that the opposition's perspective is valid but is somehow unacceptable and therefore less attractive than his/her position on the issue.

6. Conclusion: assess the original position in light of presented evidence and rebuttals.

position in light of presented evidence and rebuttals.

TABLE 2. THE STRUCTURE OF ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS

65