O. Henry is one of the American famous short story writers. His novels expose (揭露) the darkness of capitalism (资本主义) from different points of view, describe the difficult life of lower class, and praise their friendship and love to happy life.
As we all know, O. Henry's endings are always unexpected. He would suddenly change the inner world of the characters in an unbelievable way. For example, The Cop and the Anthem is one of the typical surprising endings of
O. Henrys novels. And O. Henry just used this way to expose the reality of being unable to distinguish the good from the bad.
The artistic effects of O. Henry's endings don't always appear in the end. In The Cop and the Anthem, both an attractive woman and a well-dressed customer give readers a perfect feeling. In fact, they are not the people that we think, but they really exist in our society. Is everyone in upper-class noble, kind and well-behaved? Of course not, someone just puts their dirty behaviour under their beautiful mask. In short, O. Henry's endings expose the public moral (道德) of capitalism going from bad to worse in a humorous way.
