GIFT OF MAGI

Introduction

Most good stories start with a basic register of ingredients: the primary position, confrontation, difficulty, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers occasionally agitate up the recipe and add some flavour.

Initial Situation

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all.

The story's unfastening sentences battle us right away with the problem: Della only has $1.87 to purchase a Christmas present, and it's Christmas Eve. After the first paragraph, the narrator devotes us a bit more fleshing out of the situation. Della's in a meager flat, she and her husband Jim are poor, she loves her husband more than any thing else in the entire world. Plus, she positively needs to buy him the flawless Christmas present. With $1.87. When Della permits down her hair, we furthermore learn the other most significant detail for the article: her hair and Jim's gold watch are the only valued possessions the couple has. Everything is now set up for the rest of the article to unfold.

Conflict

Della sells her hair.

The conflict is supposedly the instant where the difficulty in the article seems, but this article started right from the first with a problem. In Gift of the Magi the issue of confrontation actually explains the first difficulty and restores it with a second. By trading her hair, Della gets the cash to buy Jim a large present, eliminating the first difficulty through decisive action. Shortly then she finds the perfect present, so neither the cash nor the present is the topic any longer. But now there's a new problem: will Jim be pleased by Della's activity and appreciate her gift, or will he be furious with her for parting with the hair he loved so much?

Complication

Jim is alarmed by Della's short hair.

When Jim reaches, he doesn't appear to answer well: he stares at Della and can't appear to method that her hair is gone. But it doesn't look like he's furious, so much as easily shocked. Della can't rather realise what kind of answer he's having, neither can we. This creates suspense; we want to know what it is he's really feeling. We furthermore want to understand how he'll answer to Della's gift. When Jim breaks out of his shock, he notifies Della (and us) that his answer will make sense when Della undoes the present he acquired her…

Climax

Combs!

When Della undoes Jim's present to find the combs, we realise why Jim was so shocked. ...