Analysis

The Roads We Take

By O. Henry

Thе real name of the writer O. Henry was William Sydney Porter. He was
born in a small town Greensboro in the USA in the family of a doctor.

After finishing school at the age of fifteen, Porter worked in his uncle’s
chemist shop in Greensboro. Then he went to Texas because he wanted to see new
places. For two years he worked on a farm, then he became a clerk in an office and
at last got a job in a small bank. During this period he studied languages and
became interested in literature.

Soon he married Athol Roach; they had a daughter. One day a theft of a
thousand dollars was discovered at the bank where he worked. Though it was not
he who had taken the money, Porter left the town and went to Central America
where he stayed for some time. But when he heard that his wife was very ill, he
returned home but was immediately put into prison for three years.

His wife died and his little daughter was raised by the relatives. Porter
decided to write a story and send it to one of the American magazines to get some
money for a present for his daughter. The story called “Whistling Dick’s Christmas
Present” was published in 1899. Porter had signed it “O. Henry”, later it became
his pen-name. In 1901, when he was released from prison, he settled in New York,
and continued writing short stories for different magazines. He became one of the
most popular short-story writers in America.

During the short period of his literary activity, O. Henry wrote 273 short
stories and one novel “Cabbages and Kings” (1904).

In his stories O. Henry describes amusing incidents of everyday life in large

cities, on the farms, and on the roads of America. In most of his stories he does not
touch upon important social problems, but the author’s sympathy is with the
common people of America, whose life he knew very well.

The text under study is a story written by O. Henry titled “The Roads We
Take”. Twenty miles West of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” was stopped at a tank
to take on some water. A group of three bandits including Shark Dodson, Bob
Tidball and John Big Dog robbed the train. During the robbery john Big Dog was
shot. Dodson and Tidball ran away to their horses, but Tidball’s horse broke its
leg. Dodson’s horse wasn’t strong enough to carry two men, so Dodson betrayed
his friend and killed him. Suddenly, the narration turned out to be Dodson’s dream.
In real life he wasn’t a robber. Shark Dodson was actually in his office at Dodson
& Decker, Wall Street brokers. He was making deals with one of his clients, Mr.
Williams, who was his old friend, and led him to bankruptcy.
 The text can be structurally divided into four logical parts. The first is the
introduction, which occupies the events before the robbery. Then, there’s the chain
of events. It starts with the robbery, then, there follows bandits’ escape and
Dodson’s story about his youth. The climax event of the text is the moment of
Tidball’s death (he was shot by Dodson) and the real Dodson’s awakening in his
Wall Street office. The conclusion is the dialogue between Dodson and his clerk,
Peabody, who tried to persuade Dodson to help his client and friend, Mr. Williams.
But Dodson refused.

I think the theme of the text is humanity and friendship. It can be proved
with the help of some key words and phrases, for example: what's inside of us, to
be pards, an old friend of yours, to risk our lives together, etc.

The idea of the story can be formulated with the use of Tidball’s quotation:
“It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way
we do”. This expression means that our deeds depend on our personality. If a
person has a good heart, he will be honest and humane, even if he’s a robber. By
the example of Shark Dodson the author shows that even noble people can betray
their close friends.

The mood of the text is an epic representation. The tonality is enthusiastic

and tranquil. Speaker's point of view is the 3rd person, because the author seems to
be dissolved and we need to reveal his attitude towards the events from characters'
speech.

The author uses vocabulary of the literary strata to lead the narration,
because the functional style of the story is belles-lettres style. However, there are a
lot of colloquial words and expressions to convey the characters’ speech. The
colloquial strata of vocabulary is used to gain a realistic effect and show that the
characters are bandits, who can sound rude, emotional and tough. Moreover, the
speech includes vulgarisms. For example:

 Say, you old double-decked pirate;

 old Bolivar;
 I hate to tell you;
 dang it;
 you blackhearted son of a tarantula, etc.

Also there are a lot of contracted forms, which serve as markers of the
colloquial speech: didn't, he'll, wouldn't, hadn't, etc. Speaking about the choice of
words, we should mention that the vocabulary of this text has some Americanisms.
The purpose of using them is to show that the action takes place in the USA and
the characters are American too. For example: movin', evenin’, goin', walkin’, etc.
Some words of foreign (French, Latin, Spanish) origin are seen too, for example:
desperado, tarantula, aqua pura, adieu. Such vocabulary seems to be typical for
the Wild West, it’s also connected with the period of colonization.
 The narration is led with the use of the past tenses, because the story
occupies the events which took place in the past. For example:

 Twenty miles West of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank

to take on water.
 The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope
into the thick woods that lined the track.

The author creates the unique atmosphere of the story by using different
types of stylistic devices. First of all, I’d like to mention Lexical SD. They are
presented as epithets, for example: blackhearted son of a tarantula, cheerfully
philosophical, cold ferocity, inexorable cupidity, the spryest posse, etc. The
epithets serve to show the characters’ emotions and make the descriptions more
detailed. With the help of the epithets with negative meanings a reader can
understand that Dodson isn’t a good person in any of his images.

Metaphors are used to make the story brighter and livelier. For example:

 chuckled with the glee of a child (to show Tidball’s sincerity and joy);
 the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball's persuader to
neutrality, jumped out of his car (to denote Tidball’s heavy strike);
 you got a head for financing that knocks the horns off of anything in
Arizona (Tidball tries to express Dodson’s intelligence);

The main idea of the story is also expressed with the help of metaphor:

 It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out
the way we do (the word “road” is used to denote “lifestyle”).

The final sentence of the story is a metaphor, which has become a famous
idiom:

 “He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot

carry double.”

This sentence means that somebody comes to a dead end.

In addition, there are the examples of irony:

 While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball,
“Shark” Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big
Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round
orifices in pieces of ordnance that the carried.
 They found the messenger serene in the belief that the “Sunset
Express” was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than
aqua pura.
  While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the buttend of
his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-car safe
with dynamite.

The real situation is dangerous, but the author describes it in the humorous
way to show that it’s just a routine for the robbers.

There are a lot of examples of euphemisms and periphrasis in order to

dispose of such unpleasant words as “robber” or “bandit”: old double-decked
pirate, the Creek chevalier of industry, desperado, etc.

There’s periphrasis which acts as an insult: you blackhearted son of a

tarantula. It is used to denote Tidball’s anger towards Dodson.

Another periphrasis is used to describe Bolivar, Dodson’s horse:

unconscious accomplice.

The scene of Dodson’s awakening is described with syntactical parallelism.

This is one of Syntactical SD:

 But as "Shark" Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from
his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a
mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened
his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the
edge of a quartered-oak desk.

The purpose of using it is to show the sequence of actions.

One of the most important Syntactical SD in this story is repetition presented

as framing. A whole passage is repeated to show that Dodson as a robber and
Dodson as a broker are two images of the same soul and the same black-hearted
man. The passage is:

 The expression on Dodson's face changed in an instant to one of cold

ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable
house.

There repetition is shown as anadiplosis too:

 If you mean to shoot – shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!

The purpose of its use is to show the high level of Tidball’s emotions.

Speaking about Lexico-Syntactical SD, I should talk about simile. There are
some examples of this SD:
  The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in
the window of a reputable house (to show Dodson’s true soul and
characterize him as a negative character);
 the woods seemed to fade from his view.

Now I’d like to describe the main characters of the story. The first is “Shark”
Dodson, who has two alter-egos. The first one is a robber of the Wild West, who
was born on a farm in Ulster County and ran away from home when he was
seventeen. He was travelling among the little towns and later he became a bandit.
He seems to be a cruel man, because there were some queer stories about him
“shooting one or two men in a peculiar way”. Dodson has a strong desire of getting
money. He even kills his partner, because the loot was much more valuable for him
than a man’s life. Dodson is a negative character of the story. His second
representation is a Wall Street broker and this is his real image. He’s a rich person,
but his heart is still black. Dodson is greedy, selfish and ruthless, of course, he
doesn’t kill anyone in real life, but he does it “economically”.

The next character is Bob Tidball. He’s a fictional character of Dodson’s

dream. Tidball seems to be a neutral character. Despite he is a bandit, he has strong
opinion about duty and honour and never leaves a friend in a trouble. Tidball has a
smart mind, he has a soul of a philosopher. He’s cheerful and sincere. We don’t
have enough information about this man, but his words include the main idea of
the story. So, we can call him Dodson’s conscience.

To conclude, I want to say that my analysis has proved the author’s purpose
of writing. The image of Shark Dodson created and highlighted with the help of
different stylistic devices shows us the example of a betrayal and reveals his black
soul. His actions prove that if a man wants to be good, nothing can stop him, but if
he doesn’t want to change anything, he will be cruel and selfish in every epoch.