摘要

欧•亨利是美国最著名的短篇小说家之一，曾被评论界誉为曼哈顿桂冠散文作家和美国现代短篇小说之父。欧•亨利善于描写美国社会尤其是纽约百姓的生活。他的作品构思新颖，语言诙谐，结局常常出人意外；又因描写了众多的人物，富于生活情趣，被誉为“美国生活的幽默百科全书”。
本文通过文献研究以及对比分析来阐述在《当汽车等待的时候》这篇小说中所呈现出的欧•亨利的写作特色。文章首先阐述有关作者和这篇《当汽车等待的时候》的创作背景，在二十世纪初美国从资本主义过渡到了帝国主义，资本更加集中，两极分化也更加明显，拜金主义席卷整个社会。其次阐述欧•亨利取材反映现实的特点，这篇小说是当时社会的一个缩影，男女主人公都代表了各自群体的价值观。接下来本文结合中西方学者的研究成果，研究欧•亨利的这篇小说中关于象征物的运用，这主要表现在女孩手中的那本书象征着她对于奢侈生活的追求，以及那辆红色汽车代表着富裕的生活。最后，从明线和暗线两方面来分析《当汽车等待的时候》的结构，以此阐明“欧•亨利的结尾”的难以预料和合乎情理，同时说明这种奇妙的结尾具有能够启发读者全面深入地思考、帮助刻画人物性格和凸显小说主旨的作用。
本文不仅是对欧•亨利及其作品研究的必要补充，同时也有助于解读那个时代人们的金钱观。

关键词：欧•亨利，写作特点，《当汽车等待的时候》，意料之外的结尾，象征手法

Abstract

O. Henry is one of America’s most famous short story writers, who had been praised as the crown prose writer of Manhattan and the father of modern American short story. He is good at describing American society especially New York people’s livelihood. His works often have surprise ending, with novel conceptions and witty language; and because of describing a large number of characters, full of life interest, he is known as the “humor encyclopedia of American life”.
This thesis adopts content analysis and comparison as the research methods to elaborate O. Henry’s writing features, which are presented in “While the Auto Waits”. It first gives a brief introduction to the background of O. Henry and this short story. At that time, American Capitalism had developed to the stage of Imperialism, with more centralized capital and poorer laboring people, and money-oriented value controlled the whole society at the beginning of the twentieth century. O. Henry bases “While the Auto Waits” on the reality, and the two characters stand for different values of their different groups. The use of symbols is another feature of O. Henry’s writing. The book the girl read stands for the girl’s illusory image of upper class and the red auto represents the wealthy life. Both the surface clues and indirect clues in the structure of “While the Auto Waits” can prove that “O. Henry ending” is unexpected and reasonable, and his surprise ending has the function of enlightening his readers to think comprehensively, depicting the features of the two characters and highlighting the main idea of the short story.
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The result of this thesis is a supplement to the research on O. Henry and his works, and also helps us to understand the money-oriented value of O. Henry’s time.

Key words: O. Henry, “While the Auto Waits”, writing features, symbolism, surprise ending