Alvaro Jose Cifuentes
In class we read After Twenty Years by O. Henry, which is a short narrative full of suspense and detail. The story was good, but not excellent; I enjoyed the drama and the unexpected twist in the plot, but the climax lacked action. The author creates a fine intrigue and is able of making you feel the trust, history and friendship that is between the two characters, Jimmy and Bob. It is one of the few stories that manage fine having a bad guy as a protagonist, and at the same time being unpredictable.
O. Henry describes the scene in a way that makes you feel involved in the environment, with the suspense and mystery surrounding you. He uses sentences describing loneliness, adding tension like: “There were few people on the street to see him.” Also, he uses sensory words so that you can feel the street, like telling you the wind, rain and cold, making it a more vivid description. In conclusion, the author introduces you the settings pretty well, and he involves you in the story.
Focusing on the dialogue, getting combined with the setting the author lets you know the kind of relationship that is between Jimmy and Bob, the childhood and the trust they had in each other. The dialogue lets you know how important the promises were between them, and you can foreshadow how strong the relation was. By the other hand, with the rainy, windy and horrible setting they let you know that nothing in the world would prevent the meeting to happen, but what happens next wasn’t planned. O. Henry introduces you by Bob’s way of talking about Jimmy, that the characters were friends of their whole life, and with every little detail you constructed this to form an idea of the friendship.
In conclusion, in this story titled After Twenty Years the suspense and detail are base elements to make it a good story as it is. The suspense the author creates is good, and he supports it with little, great details told throughout the story. The detail is found in the settings and characters, which is the focus that I support from the story, and O. Henry makes you feel the trust that Bob has that Jimmy is going to come, and how each character is molded exactly so that it fits with the rest. Finally, I restate my opinion that the story is very full of detail, but to complete it, the author should add more action in future stories.
In class we read After Twenty Years by O. Henry, which is a short narrative full of suspense and detail. The story was good, but not excellent; I enjoyed the drama and the unexpected twist in the plot, but the climax lacked action. The author creates a fine intrigue and is able of making you feel the trust, history and friendship that is between the two characters, Jimmy and Bob. It is one of the few stories that manage fine having a bad guy as a protagonist, and at the same time being unpredictable.
O. Henry describes the scene in a way that makes you feel involved in the environment, with the suspense and mystery surrounding you. He uses sentences describing loneliness, adding tension like: “There were few people on the street to see him.” Also, he uses sensory words so that you can feel the street, like telling you the wind, rain and cold, making it a more vivid description. In conclusion, the author introduces you the settings pretty well, and he involves you in the story.
Focusing on the dialogue, getting combined with the setting the author lets you know the kind of relationship that is between Jimmy and Bob, the childhood and the trust they had in each other. The dialogue lets you know how important the promises were between them, and you can foreshadow how strong the relation was. By the other hand, with the rainy, windy and horrible setting they let you know that nothing in the world would prevent the meeting to happen, but what happens next wasn’t planned. O. Henry introduces you by Bob’s way of talking about Jimmy, that the characters were friends of their whole life, and with every little detail you constructed this to form an idea of the friendship.
In conclusion, in this story titled After Twenty Years the suspense and detail are base elements to make it a good story as it is. The suspense the author creates is good, and he supports it with little, great details told throughout the story. The detail is found in the settings and characters, which is the focus that I support from the story, and O. Henry makes you feel the trust that Bob has that Jimmy is going to come, and how each character is molded exactly so that it fits with the rest. Finally, I restate my opinion that the story is very full of detail, but to complete it, the author should add more action in future stories.