Scribd
Upload
3 views2 pages

Unit 1

The Gift of the Magi is a short story by O. Henry about a young couple, Della and Jim, who sacrifice their most prized possessions to buy each other Christmas gifts, highlighting the themes of love and selflessness. Della sells her hair for a platinum chain for Jim's watch, while Jim sells his watch to buy a comb for Della's hair, illustrating the irony of their gifts. The story emphasizes the true spirit of gift-giving and the value of human relationships over material possessions.

Uploaded by

P Manjunath reddy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
3 views2 pages

Unit 1

The Gift of the Magi is a short story by O. Henry about a young couple, Della and Jim, who sacrifice their most prized possessions to buy each other Christmas gifts, highlighting the themes of love and selflessness. Della sells her hair for a platinum chain for Jim's watch, while Jim sells his watch to buy a comb for Della's hair, illustrating the irony of their gifts. The story emphasizes the true spirit of gift-giving and the value of human relationships over material possessions.

Uploaded by

P Manjunath reddy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

UNIT 1

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

The Gift of the Magi is a well-known short story by American short story writer O. Henry, the pen name
of William Sydney Porter. The story first appeared in The New York Sunday World

The story centers around a young couple Della and Jim who are poor but hardworking and
their existence is full of struggle but they manage to experience joy through the power of their
love for each other. They planned to make Christmas eve a special one with a wonderful gift
for each other. Jim and Della had to sell off their precious possessions to buy gifts for each
other on Christmas Della in order to have a fine, rare, and sterling gift for Jim sold her long
and beautiful hair. Finally, she bought a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, for
Jim's gold watch. On the other hand, Jim sold his precious gold watch to buy an expensive
tortoiseshell comb for Della's beautiful hair.

But the gifts of Della and Jim are unique and wise in the sense that they reveal the true
essence of gift-giving on Christmas i.e. selflessness a desire to add the happiness of the one
who receives the gift and the spirit of sacrifice. Through O' Henry terms the couple as 'the
foolish children' he points out clearly that they value the human relationship and their mutual
love and generosity make them the 'Magi'. Thus the title is quite significant and appropriate.

2 Marks Questions

READING:

The two main types of reading techniques are the following:

 Skimming
 Scanning
Skimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall
impression of the content of a reading selection.
Scanning is a reading technique to be used when you want to find specific information
quickly. In scanning you read a passage only to find the answer.

WRITING
1. When do we Use Capital Letters?
 Use a capital letter for the personal pronoun 'I':
 Use a capital letter to begin a sentence or to begin speech:
 Use capital letters for many abbreviations and acronyms:
G.M.T. or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
N.A.T.O. or NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
 Use a capital letter for days of the week, months of the year, holidays:
Monday, Tuesday, January, February, Christmas
2. Types of Punctuation:
 period (full stop) ( . )
 coma ( , )
 question mark ( ? )
 exclamation mark ( ! )
 colon ( : )
 semicolon ( ; )
 single quotation marks ( ‘ ‘ )
 double quotation marks ( “ “ )

3. 8 Parts of Speech

 Noun
 Pronoun
 Verb
 Adjective
 Adverb
 Preposition
 Conjunction
 Interjection

You might also like