Main characters and plot

The main characters we meet in the extract under analysis are Della and her husband Jim. Della is the loving, warm, selfless, and occasionally hysterical heroine of the story. Della's financially poor. She spends all of her days in a cramped flat, as "mistress of the home". In other words, she's a homemaker. Della basically lives for one person: Jim, her husband. She's spent a lot of the time leading up to Christmas just thinking of what to get him. Jim's job is not so great. He's the only breadwinner for the Dillingham Young family and it seems he works long hours, but his salary is low. And it recently went from bad to worse: whereas he used to make $30 a week he's now down to just $20. He and Della are struggling just to pay the expenses of their small flat. So if Jim happens to seem a little tired, serious, overworked, and perhaps a tad underweight, there's a good reason for: “He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.” The one thing that keeps Jim going is his love for Della. Why does Jim love Della so much? Probably in part because she loves him so much. 

The plot runs as follows:

1)                          initial situation(the story's opening sentences confront us right away with the problem: Della only has $1.87 to buy a Christmas present, and it's Christmas Eve);

2)                          a conflict - Della sells her hair. The conflict is supposedly the moment where the "problem" in the story appears, but this story began right from the first with a problem. The point of conflict actually solves the first problem and replaces it with a second. By selling her hair, Della gets the money to buy Jim a great present, eliminating the first problem through decisive action;

3)                          a complication - Jim is shocked by Della's short hair. When Jim arrives, he doesn't seem to react well: he stares at Della and can't seem to process that her hair is gone. But it doesn't look like he's angry, so much as simply shocked. Della can't quite understand what kind of reaction he's having, nor can we;

4)                          a climax – “Combs!” When Della opens Jim's present to find the combs, we understand why Jim was so shocked. Although the climax doesn't fully "predict" the ending, it is the first half of the twist;

5)                          a denouement - presented with his gift, Jim calmly reveals (with a smile) that he sold his watch to buy Della her combs. So her present is useless too;

6)                          a conclusion - in the narrator's final paragraph, which is definitely a "zoom out" of epic proportions, the narrator tells us that it doesn't really matter that Jim and Della's presents turned out to be useless. They are the wisest givers of all - in fact, they're the magi. We leave feeling satisfied and happy.