On Christmas Eve, a young wife sells her hair to buy a chain for her husband's watch, and he sells the watch to buy combs for her hair.
A tiny, warm, tightly built story whose whole joke is its arithmetic. The narrator's chatty voice can feel dated, but the ending still lands in about ten minutes of reading. Four and a half out of five, in my view.
Every guide comes as a video and a full written article. Pick the one you need: the review is spoiler-free, the ending explained is not.
A full-spoiler Gift of the Magi summary read as a receipt: the $1.87, the hair sold for $20, the $21 chain, the combs, the one price the story never gives, and the magi ending. Counted from the Project Gutenberg text.
The Gift of the Magi is a short story by O. Henry about a young couple, Della and Jim, on Christmas Eve. We read the text of Project Gutenberg ebook 7256, The Gift of the Magi, which is about two thousand words long, so every number on this page comes from a story you can read in ten minutes.
Below you’ll find a summary read as a receipt: the money in the story, line by line, the hair, the chain and the combs, the one price the narrator never gives, and what the closing paragraph says about the magi. The page has full spoilers, since the whole story is covered.
A tiny, warm, tightly built story whose whole joke is its arithmetic. The narrator's chatty voice can feel dated, but the ending still lands in about ten minutes of reading. Four and a half out of five, in my view. Read it if: you want a quick classic you can finish in one sitting; you enjoy stories built around one ironic twist; you are studying it for class and need the plot and the ending; you like narrators who talk to the reader. Skip it if: you dislike sentimental or old-fashioned endings; you want a long, layered plot: this is about two thousand words; you have already read it and only need a plot refresher.
A full-spoiler Gift of the Magi summary read as a receipt: the $1.87, the hair sold for $20, the $21 chain, the combs, the one price the story never gives, and the magi ending. Counted from the Project Gutenberg text. Summary: The Gift of the Magi →
A short story by O. Henry. On Christmas Eve, Della has one dollar and eighty-seven cents. She sells her long hair for twenty dollars and buys her husband Jim a platinum fob chain for his gold watch. Jim, meanwhile, has sold the watch to buy her a set of tortoise shell combs.
Each gift is made useless by the other's sacrifice. The chain needs the watch Jim sold, and the combs need the hair Della sold. In our reading, the narrator then calls the couple the wisest givers of all, which turns the sad outcome into a kind of win.
Della has $1.87, sixty cents of it in pennies. The flat costs $8 a week, and Jim's pay has dropped from $30 to $20 a week. Della gets $20 for her hair and pays $21 for the chain, leaving 87 cents. The text gives no price for Jim's watch or the combs.
