Self-Sacrifice in O.Henry's Gift of the magi and Rabindranath Tagore's The Cabuliwallah - Essay Example

Gifts of Love and Caring In both of these stories the is telling us about unselfish gifts, and while there is a similarity in the motivations,they are based in totally different cultural circumstances. The gift of the Magi, by OHenry, was written strictly from a Christian viewpoint. However, The Cabilawalla, by Rabindranath Tagore was written from a Brahmin standpoint when in the was in the midst of political and religious turmoil. Each of these stories was written about giving at the cost of something most precious (Griffiths 3-3).

It is the cost that seems very different, and some not familiar with East Indian customs may not understand the actual sacrifice of the giver in Tagore’s story.O’Henry was praised as a valued US Southern writer who recorded the reality of the south of his time in his stories. His personal history is almost as interesting as those of his characters, and nearly as ironic, While many know his real name, few know his real history, since fact and fiction have become totally entwined, and the "legendary O.

Henry … is very different from the real William Sydney Porter. In his bit of autobiographica, which he published in the New York Times, April 4, 1909, Porter himself contributed to this legend." (Paine 351) Writing was probably a very good career for OHenry at that time, because he spent more than three years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and he was reclusive type in any case. It is not that he never went out, but he seldom revealed anything terribly personal about himself("Federico and the Magis Gift." 70-70).He is known for the interesting twists in his stories, the most famous of which is probably The Gift of the Magi.

In the story a young couple were very poor each sacrifices their most precious possession in order to buy a beautiful gift for the other. The poignant irony is that each gift it is bought to accompany the precious thing that the other sacrificed. In the wifes case she had her long hair cut in order to buy a beautiful platinum watch fob for her husbands gold watch. The husband, in his turn, sold his gold watch to buy her some very expensive combs for her hair. I was found it rather sad that he actually sold the watch.

I wouldve preferred that he pointed, since it was a family heirloom. Her hair will grow back, and they pawned watch could be redeemed.Rabindranath Tagore was born into a privileged family in 1871 and died in 1941 before the final split up of India. He was a fierce nationalilst, but was known to criticize Gandhi for being a bit too extreme. He did not believe in artificial human divisions, such as the caste system in India, or even the differences among the different political factions that eventually split up the country.

"Nationalism according to Tagore was ʻa great menaceʻ (tagore 1917, 111). To him it was ʻa cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age, and eating into its moral vitalityʻ (16). " (Hogan and Pandit 29) Tagore was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in literature four 1913, and was given a knighthood by the British Crown, but renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in protest. He was known for his works in literature, music and art, a multitalented pacifist from a very multitalented family, many of whom became famous in their own right.

Tagore his work, especially in poetry and music, was somewhat of a fusion of his own culture and that of Western cultures, since he was widely traveled, and admired all the various traditions of other artists and writers ("Literary Assessments of Tagore by Bengali Muslim Writers." 1133-1152).In Tagores story, a Bengali itinerant merchant from the area around Afghanistan makes the acquaintance of a writer in Calcutta, and is entranced by his young daughter, who talks incessantly. For most of a year he visits almost daily and brings trinkets and other little surprises for the child.

On the date when he was due to depart for home and was trying to collect debts, the Cabilawalla is involved in a fight with someone who does not want to pay him. He injures the fellow and is, therefore, jailed. He apparently spends quite a few years in jail, and him and returns on the day of the wedding of the small child. He brings with him some little gifts that indicate that he doesnt realize that this child is no longer a child. The kind writer brings his daughter out to meet with her old friend, thus shocking the merchant with the reality that she has grown to womanhood.

The two men sit down to talk and the writer learns that the merchant was merely giving little gifts to his daughter in remembrance of his own daughter back home, who would now also be grown to womanhood. He tells the merchant that he hopes this gift will bring his about to be married daughter good luck. The writer realizes that the merchant is too poor to go home after being just released from prison, and gives him a gift of enough money to allow him to go, telling him to go see his daughter.

This cost him a couple of the wedding adornments, such as special music and beautiful lights, drawing criticism from his female relatives. However, he believes that this was the right thing to do.Anyone not familiar with East Indian culture of the time would not know how important the wedding accouterments were. This was the last thing he would do for his daughter, and it was seen as a mark of family pride to be able to give the most sumptuous wedding in the neighborhood. Had he told them that he had given the money to the itinerant merchant, his female relatives would have been even more angry.

After all the merchant was a foreigner, a criminal and a poor man. He would not have been seen as worthy of the gift. His sacrifice was truly much more than most Westerners perceive.The fathers gift to the merchant was as unrecoverable as the gold watch of the husband in The Gift of the Magi. His daughter will have only one wedding, and her wedding will not have the beautiful colored lights and the special music that had been planned. Since her wedding is one of the two major days of womans life of that time in India, it is considered to be most important that she have tremendously beautiful memories of that day, and that people talk about it for years.

Is every bit as important as a Southern plantation owners could name in America of the time. In the context of the time in which it was written, it mightve been a bit controversial, considering the long history of cultural separation by the caste system and the treating foreigners as total outsiders, beneath the marriage of the lowest caste. Category did not live to see the split up of India.Works Cited "Federico and the Magis Gift." Library Media Connection 23.5 (2005): 70-. Print. Griffiths, Ruth.

"Love is the Greatest Gift from a Selfless Heart." Rural Roots 20.45 (2010): 3-. Print. Hogan, Patrick Colm, and Lalita Pandit, eds. Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. Questia. Web. 14 Dec. 2011."Literary Assessments of Tagore by Bengali Muslim Writers." University of Toronto Quarterly 77.4 (2008): 1133-52. Print. Paine, Gregory. Southern Prose Writers: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes.

New York: American Book Co., 1947. Questia. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.Tagore, Rabindranath. "The Kabuliwallah." International Journal of Humanities and Peace 18.1 (2002): 72+. Questia. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.