Gift Of The Magi By Gary Soto

In every good, loving relationship, there is always a time and need for sacrifice. Sacrifice is important in maintaining a good, loving relationship because you can’t always both be happy. A sacrifice shows your love toward someone and that you are willing to put that person in a better position than yourself. “Oranges” by Gary Soto, and “Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry both discuss sacrifice and its importance towards a loving relationship. In the poem “Oranges”, Gary Soto develops the theme that sacrifice contributes to a loving relationship by using symbolism to show sacrifice. In this first person poem, Soto tells us about his first date with a girl, and how they walked to the drugstore. The girl picks a candy that is too expensive, so he takes the money he has, “then an orange, and set[s] them quietly on the counter” (Soto, 36-38). This orange he sacrifices can both represent the money he is missing and the love he has for his girl. He was willing to risk giving his orange for the missing money in order to get the candy that he couldn’t afford for her. In the end, this sacrifice works out, and it makes his girl happy, even if he lost one of his oranges in the process. …show more content…
Henry’s short story “Gift of the Magi”, the author develops the theme that sacrifice contributes to a loving relationship by creating irony around the subject of sacrifice. In this story, the two main characters Della and her husband both sell away their most prized possessions in order to buy each other something for Christmas. They both “most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house”, which makes the gifts they bought for one another completely useless. (Henry, 5). The author uses this irony to represent that the sacrifice the two characters have for each other shows the love and thoughtfulness in their relationship. They both were willing to lose their favorite thing to make the other happy, even if it wasn’t going to benefit