Witches’ Loaves

The contents of O Henry's novels are always satirical, but they are philosophical and representative, and the endings are unexpected but reasonable, thus deeply touching the readers. At the end of the novel, "Miss Martha goes into the back room. She took off her blue-dotted silk waistcoat and replaced it with her worn brown serge dress. Then she dumped the hot rod and borax juice in the trash can outside the window." It showed the despair of her disillusionment. The beginning of the novel also mentioned wenbang and borax fried juice, but at that time she was full of infinite longing and desire for love. The comparison between the beginning and the end highlights the tragedy of Miss Martha being played tricks on by fate, and implies the author's sympathy and compassion for the fate of ordinary people. "Bread" is the clue of the whole text. The hero gets acquainted with Miss Martha because he buys bread, and Miss Martha inadvertently destroys the other party's blueprint because she adds butter to the bread. "Witch" hints at miss Martha awkward status in the whole story, "the witch bread" on the surface is miss Martha sent to the customer's bread with butter, the bread carries good love miss Martha, but hurt customers, miss Martha's sense of itself as a disaster for the other, "witch" doesn't exist in real life, it also hinted at miss Martha love is illusory, could not be achieved. I think what the novel is trying to tell us at the end of the day is that it's not good for you to assume that it's good for you, and it's a disaster for others.