The problem of literary genres attracts attention and is actively appears in literary criticism and linguistics, being not only a manifestation of the existence of literature, but also a manifestation of the existence of language, the genre of aspects focuses on all the priority of artistic manifestations such as the nature of references in the text, the ambivalence of semantics, the plurality of interpretations of the word, absolute anthropocentrism.
The variety of life relations brings to life a variety of life forms, in which we find various ways of depicting human characters in the most typical manifestations for them. One of these forms is the novel. A novel (Italian novella - news) is a narrative prose genre, which is characterized by briefness, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism, and an unexpected denouement. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for a story sometimes it is called a kind of story.
The short story is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The plot structure of the novel is similar to the dramatic one, but usually simpler. The plots were constructed primarily to convey a specific moral, even when this led to violations of the work’s internal logic. In addition, short story writers were characterized by an “ornate literary style,” employing figurative language and formal vocabulary to suggest that the flattered reader was intelligent and sophisticated [Marler, 1994: 167].
The story is characterized by the metonymic principle of reality coverage, according to which the artistic picture of the world, modeled in the story, is presented as a key fragment of a big world. Therefore, they say about the fragmentation of the story. By the 1990s, short fiction experienced a true resurgence, largely shaped by the influence of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Carver [Mose, 2004: 84]. The metonymic principle of reflecting reality determines a single event, single-problem story, a small volume, a limited number of characters and integrity. The story usually explores the situation in which the hero shows himself most prominently (the boundary situation). If reality is viewed as a fictional construct and a writer seeks to explore its nature, then it becomes almost inevitable to turn to art itself and to the process of artistic creation. In this case, when reality is understood as an artistic fiction, art may represent the only possible means of comprehending it [May, 1994: 208].
A story, like any other type of text, has its own temporal system that most adequately satisfies the structural, compositional and stylistic features of texts of this type. Varieties of the story have their spatial and temporal parameters. Thus, the spatial and temporal parameters of a science fiction story are defined as “unfamiliar” time and “unfamiliar” space.
However, as Good notes, the earlier terms “story” and “story” were used synonymously and actually denoted short prose works ranging from five to one hundred pages in length. By the end of the 19th century, however, these designations were supplanted by the magazine term “short story” [Good, 1994: 148]. Henry was one of the prominent American writer who had suffered so much in his life and began to perceive the world around him more acutely. With all the subjectivity of the content and the immediacy of the form of expression, a lyrical work always contains a certain vital generalization [Timofeyev, 1963: 339].
In the short stories about Latin America, which formed the basis for the novel “Kings and Cabbage”, the author condemns the imperialist, colonialist policy of the United States towards weak countries, protests against the devastation of their national wealth. A significant group of short stories by O. Henry is devoted to the description of a capitalist city. The big city is indifferent and cruel to the fate of the little man. O. Henry paints an impressive picture of the disorder, poverty of ordinary people, their unfulfilled hopes, broken illusions (“Furnished Room”, “Room in the Attic”, “Gifts of the Magi”). Typists, saleswomen, actors, petty employees are the heroes of these short stories portrayed by the author with sympathy. They are the victims of a capitalist city, cruel and heartless.
The short story “The Woman” ridicules the bribability of American statesmen. Many stories criticize the predatory morality of bourgeois society, its hypocrisy. (“Elsie in New York”, “The Vile Deceiver”, “How Black Bill Hid”). Critically perceiving the American bourgeois reality O. Henry like Bret Harte tried to oppose to it the romanticized Western American reality as a positive ideal. The short stories “Heart and Cross”, “Redemption”, “Sanatorium on the Ranch” depict natural, close to nature people who have retained their humanity, high moral principles, honesty, pride, and spontaneity. O. Henry, in his own way, continued other romantic searches for a positive program. He creates a romantic image of an American tramp Hobo, who prefers a wandering life to an orderly philistine existence.
Another direction in O. Henry’s short stories is associated with the image of a “noble swindler”. The hero of many of his novels is Jeff Peters, the author’s attitude to which is characterized by duality. On the one hand, Jeff is roguish, impudent. On the other hand, he is not devoid of good impulses he loves adventure and treats himself ironically. The image of Jeff like other characters resemble him, is drawn in a comically sympathetic way.
Speaking about O. Henry’s realistic and romantic stories one can say at the same time that the writer also created sentimental short stories and stories written in the spirit of “gentle realism”. He has a lot of short stories with a traditional “happy ending”, purely entertaining. According to V.N. Bogoslovsky, the artistic method of O. Henry is a combination of realistic, sentimental and “gentle” elements, often intricately intertwined in his short stories. The genre varieties in his short stories are very diverse, for instance, a satire short story, an anecdote short story, a grotesque short story, an adventure romantic short story, a parody short story, etc. The most characteristic features of the writer’s artistic manner are humor, satire, irony, comic and grotesque. The stories are dynamic, written in colloquial language using jargon, parodic techniques, and unexpected comparisons.
Father Henry, more than any of his predecessors or contemporaries, used the form of an action novel with a surprise ending. This contributed not only to its entertaining, but also performed a certain artistic function. An unexpected ending revealed a discrepancy between the real and the desired, revealed the contradictions of reality [Bogoslovsky, Grazhdanskaya, 1989: 294-296].
Working on the language was almost the most important moment for the author. While reading it may seem that he wrote stories easily and quickly without careful processing and a special choice of words. But according to Jennings, O. Henry was a meticulous artist. He worked like a slave on a dictionary. He stared at every word, enjoying every new nuance.
The expressiveness of the grammatical means of a literary text is usually less noticeable than the expressiveness of phonetics and, in particular, vocabulary. According to the linguist V.V. Odintsov it is hidden in the second or even in the third place. The word exists in some form and any kind of grammatical form does not seem to be the result of the free choice of the writer. When the writer finds the right word, he does not choose the form, it is dictated by the laws of the language [Odintsov, 1973: 28].
And what principles did Henry follow and what methods did he use? The main principle is the expulsion of stylistic patterns, the fight against “literarism” with a smooth “middle” style and irony over the “high” style. Hence, the wide use of jargon in thieves’ short stories (slang), the emphasized disregard for literary words, the comically unusual and unexpected invariably-reducing comparisons, etc. We often find a direct irony in relation to one or another literary style revealing his principles.
Most readers and many critics very often identified the narrator of short stories, including the short stories “Golden Beetle”, with the author himself, putting an equal sign between him and his character. It is not difficult to understand their delusion. The narrator is an almost abstract figure in logical stories. He has no name, no biography, and even his appearance is not described. True, the reader may conclude something about his inclinations, interests, way of life, but this information is scarce, they come across by chance since he is not talking about himself, but about his hero. Everything we know about him is broad education, the love of scientific pursuits, attraction to a solitary lifestyle which fully identifies him with the author. However, the similarity here is purely external, not extending to the way of thinking. In this regard, the narrator is the exact opposite of the author.
The social nature of O. Henry is primarily manifested in his demonstrative and emphasized democracy. The writer seeks to draw the attention of the privileged part of society to people deprived of benefits in this society. And so he often makes the heroes of his short stories those who, in modern terms, are “near the poverty line.” The overwhelming majority of O. Henry’s stories are, in essence, devoted to the most ordinary phenomena of life. His characters are driven by a feeling of love, friendship, the desire to do something good, the ability to sacrifice themselves. However, negative personalities act under the influence of hatred, anger, money-grubbing, careerism. Behind the unusual there is always the ordinary in the end in Henry’s stories.
The writer has a mocking or ironic tone in most of his stories. The development of the action and the behavior of the characters, and sometimes very serious phenomena in O. Henry’s short stories always come down to a joke and a funny denouement.
O. Henry notices the funny in people, in their behavior, in those situations that develop in the process of clashes between the characters. O. Henry’s laughter is good-natured, there is no rudeness and cynicism in it. The writer does not laugh at his characters’ physical defects at their actual misfortunes. He is deeply alien to that cruel gloomy humor, which is sometimes inherent in the writers of the West.
O. Henry’s laughter is noble, because the basis of the writer’s humor is a deep faith in a person, love for him, hatred for everything that disfigures life and people.
O. Henry has a story called “Soul Mates”, which tells how a burglar breaks into the house of a wealthy man at night and finds him lying in bed. The bandit orders the man in the street to put his hands up. The inhabitant explains that due to an acute attack of rheumatism, he cannot do this. The bandit immediately remembers that he suffers from this disease too. He asks the patient what he uses against this illness. So they talk, and then go out to drink together.
The comical idyll depicting a robber and his possible victim walking arm in arm into a tavern cause a smile. It’s funny that the human shows up in such an unexpected, abnormal form. In O. Henry’s humor, therefore, there is a significant amount of irony in relation to the order of life that gives rise to such inconsistencies. Behind this irony lies the sadness that is so characteristic of the humor of humanist writers, depicting the funny grimaces of life.
The ending of the stories, like a bright flash of lightning illuminates everything that used to be hidden in the darkness and the picture immediately becomes clear. Although O. Henry constantly laughs in his stories, it happens that he laughs while his soul is shedding tears. But the writer believed in life, in people, and his stories are illuminated by a spark of true humanity.
The writer along with linguistic stylistic parameters in short stories has a very important artistic originality in describing intonation, its reproduction. The intonation is set and determined by the syntactic structure of the sentence and is fixed by punctuation marks. However, in addition to the syntactic construction of the sentence itself, lyrical intonation in a work of art is born and formed depending on many specific conditions, the main point of which is the poetic perception of reality.
O. Henry poetically recreates such a situation of utterance, likening it to the atmosphere of live, colloquial speech. If the situation of living, colloquial speech is most often spontaneous, unique, inimitable, if intonation lives and is perceived only at the very moment of utterance, then in a work of art such an ability is organized by the writer.
All kinds of expressive means are widely used in American short stories, for instance, antonyms used by O. Henry. Antonyms are different words related to the same part of speech, but opposite in meaning. The opposition of antonyms in speech is a bright source of speech expression, which establishes the emotionality of speech.
In stories, hyperbole is also often used. It is a figurative expression that exaggerates any action, object or phenomenon. Hyperbole is used to enhance the artistic impression. Individual author’s neologisms (occasionalisms) allow to create certain artistic effects due to their novelty, expressing the author’s view on a topic or problem.
The metaphor is extensively used in short stories. It is a hidden comparison based on the similarity between distant phenomena and objects. At the heart of any metaphor is an unnamed comparison of some objects with those that have common features. In artistic speech, the author uses metaphors to enhance the expressiveness of speech, to create and evaluate a picture of life, to convey the inner world of the characters and the point of view of the narrator and the author himself.
In a metaphor, the author creates an image and an artistic representation of the objects, phenomena that he describes, and the reader understands exactly what similarity the semantic connection between the figurative and direct meaning of the word is based on. Epithet, personification, oxymoron, antithesis can be considered as a kind of metaphor. A detailed metaphor is a detailed transfer of the properties of one object, phenomenon or aspect to another according to the principle of similarity or contrast. Metaphor is particularly expressive. Possessing unlimited possibilities in bringing together a wide variety of objects or phenomena, metaphor allows you to rethink an object, reveal and expose its inner nature. Sometimes it is an expression of the individual author's vision of the world.
An oxymoron is a combination of contrasting words that create a new concept or idea. This is a combination of logically incompatible concepts, sharply contradictory in meaning and mutually exclusive. This technique sets the reader to the perception of contradictory, complex phenomena, often it is the struggle of opposites. Most often, an oxymoron conveys the author’s attitude to an object or phenomenon. Ex.: Sad fun continued.
Personification is one of the types of metaphor, when the transfer of a feature is carried out from a living object to an inanimate one. When impersonated, the described object is outwardly likened to a person. Even more often, actions that are permissible only to people are attributed to an inanimate object. Rain splashed bare feet along the paths of the garden.
Ex.: Trees, bending down towards me, extended their thin arms. Rain splashed bare feet along the paths of the garden.
O. Henry’s stories inanimate objects are often endowed with the properties of living animate objects.
For example: cleaver book – умная книга, mild wind – ласковый ветер
Comparison is one of the means of expressiveness of the language, helping the author to express his point of view, create whole artistic pictures, and give a description of objects. In comparison, one phenomenon is shown and evaluated by comparing it with another phenomenon. Comparison is usually joined by conjunctions like, as if, as if, exactly, etc. but it serves for a figurative description of the most diverse features of objects, qualities, and actions.
Having explored the means of expression, one can say how rich, associative and whimsical the language of the short stories is. The presence of intrigue, the internal conflict of the characters, their overcoming external obstacles, the emotional tone of the narration, the unexpected denouement arouse interest and a desire to read and explore the language of the novel.
Letters and unfinished manuscripts testify that O. Henry approached a new frontier in the last years of his life. He longed for “simple honest prose”, sought to avoid some of the stereotypes that the commercial press expected from him.
Used literature:
Fayzulloyeva Z. O. Genri hikoyalari adabiyotning nasriy janrlaridan biri sifatida. Maqolada qissaning adabiy janr sifatida paydo bo‘lishi, uning asosiy rivojlanish bosqichlari yo‘lga qo‘yilgan va uni shakllantirgan mualliflar ijodi yoritilgan. Shuningdek, u muallifning fikrlarini yetkazish uchun ishlatiladigan stilistik vositalarni tahlil qiladi. O. Genrining roman va hikoyalar oxirini yaratishdagi ixtiroligi shunchaki hayratlanarli. Ba’zida yozuvchining barcha sa’y-harakatlari bizni kutilmagan yakun bilan hayratda qoldirishga qaratilgandek tuyiladi.
Файзуллаева З. Рассказы О. Генри как одни из прозаических жанров литературы. В статье исследуется возникновение короткого рассказа как литературного жанра, прослеживаются его основные этапы развития и освещаются работы авторов, оказавших на него влияние. Также анализируются стилистические приёмы, используемые для передачи идей автора. Изобретательность О. Генри в создании концовок романов и рассказов просто поразительна. Иногда кажется, что все усилия писателя направлены лишь на то, чтобы удивить нас неожиданной развязкой.
