<p> Trujillo 1</p><p>Maria Trujillo ENG 102.0845 Prof. Dr. Silva April 1, 2009</p><p>A Transformation for Love In “A Retrieved Reformation” the author O. Henry narrates a tale with a happy ending, also touching on the theme of altruism. The reader gathers from this tale the idea that Love can transform a person, no matter what he/she had done in the past. When Jimmy Valentine an extraordinary crook who can open a safe in ten minutes, meets Annabel Simpson on the steps of his next robbing target, something inside of him changes; he is from that moment never able to be an extraordinary crook again.</p><p>The story begins when Jimmy Valentine is out of prison where he has been incarcerated for only four months. When he is on the streets again he does not appreciate the gifts that nature has for him. ‘Disregarding the song of the birds, waving green trees, and the smell of flowers, Jimmy headed straight to a restaurant.’</p><p>(50). The author is letting the reader know which kind of person Jimmy is, someone who is not grateful to be free, to be able to see the sunlight outside from the steel bars. Jimmy goes directly to a restaurant and to smoke a cigar; with this occurrence the readers affirm once more that Jimmy Valentine is a person who takes life for granted and who thinks he is extraordinary and powerful. Jimmy Valentine goes to Elmore, a small town in Arkansas, where his life reaches a turning point. He meets Annabel Adams, the bank owner’s daughter. It is love at first sight. ‘Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man.’(52) Here Jimmy suffers a transformation that only important circumstances in a person’s life are able to do. He is in love, in love with a person he barely knows but who is worth it for a change, for a turn in his bad habits and for whom he forgets who he was. He has reborn, a new man, a new life, even a new name: Ralph D. Spencer. Trujillo 2</p><p>It has been a year since Jimmy met Annabel. Jimmy who is now Mr. Spencer is going to marry Annabel Adams in two weeks. He has been able to become a prosperous shoe businessman. He is esteemed by his in laws and respected in town. Mr. Spencer decides that it has been long enough and he is ready to get rid of the last remembrance that he has of his past life, his tools suitcase, tools that were costume made for him. On his way to meet a friend who is going to inherit the tools he and his new soon to be family stop at the bank. Mr. Adams Annabel’s dad was proudly showing the new bank’s acquisition. A modern safe, he showed his family how to open it and how to close it. Little May and Agatha (Annabel’s nieces) were playing with the safe when all of sudden Agatha got trapped inside it. Desperate and with eyes full of hope Annabel looked at Mr. Spencer and said ‘”Can you do something, Ralph – try, won’t you?”’(54). At the unforeseen calling of his loved one there was nothing that could stop him. Ralph D. Spencer becomes Jimmy Valentine again and opens the safe. His past comes back but this time for a good cause, to save that little and helpless child from a certain horrible dead. At this point of the story the readers are able to see a mixture of feelings, feelings of regret from a not so honest past and at the same time that feeling to do good and help that little child. Jimmy Valentine had changed he is a fine man now. </p><p>He wants to begin a family and to live honestly. But his past will always burden him, wherever he will go or whoever he might become. This occurrence makes the reader analyzes and reconsiders his own actions. Do you have to be always honest in order to be happy? or Are you able to burden your past for obscure as it could have been? I cannot answer any of those questions with facts, all that I can say is that love was the medium for which Jimmy Valentine passed to be an extraordinary crook who did not care about anything to Ralph D. Spencer an unselfish and altruistic man who was able to give up his happiness to save that little girl’s life. </p><p>Trujillo 3</p><p>Work Cited Henry, O. “A Retrieved Reformation.” The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories. </p><p>Ed. Stanley Appelbaum and Shane Weller. New York: Dover, 1992. 49-55.</p>