The Cactus

The Cactus

The Cactus is one of the greatest critiques of egotism and hypocritical conceit by O’Henry. The basic storyline is simple. Trysdale, a young man, noble, wealthy and cultured, realizes that his girl friend is excessively devoted to him and sort of worships him. She showers him with all sorts of superlative appellations and Trysdale very fondly accepts them, as naturally as the desert sand soaks up rain. He takes her for granted, since the guiding principle of his life is vanity. ‘She had always insisted on placing him upon a pedestal, and he had accepted her homage with royal dignity’. Ultimately the day comes when Trysdale proposes to her. He is sure that she would be too eager to accept him readily. She showed all kinds of emotional jubilation and her body language too had been one of eager consent.’ How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was.

The story is set in Trysdale’s drawing room after the marriage ceremony of this girl was over and the scent of the huge bunches of flowers piled in the church was still haunting him. He was filled with bitterness and chagrin, trying to ruminate upon the reason for his loss and how lovingly the girl had given her to the bridegroom in a public ceremony within the church. Trysdale was deeply distressed and looked unhappy. With him, at the present moment, was his friend who happens to be the brother of the bride, who coincidentally finds the tag on the cactus and says that it was a common cactus in South America where he lived, and that the word on the tag was not a biological name, but a common Spanish word with which the plant is called. Trysdale now realizes his fault at ignoring the tag and the cactus sent by his proposed girl friend and instead expecting her assent in the way he expected her to give it .Trysdale knew very well that that was not true, that all his Spanish was mugged up from hackneyed Spanish phrases which he often learnt from the dictionaries and used them only to show off. But Trysdale was too proud to tell her the truth. She, therefore, was under the impression that he was a master of Spanish and had, therefore, very romantically assented to his proposal in the Spanish language which he had failed to comprehend, thus giving her a false impression of being rejected by him.

O’Henry suggests through "The Cactus" that love demands truth and openness of heart. “The Cactus” is devoted to the relationships between men and women. In particular, the author criticizes egoism and conceit.

The main idea of the story is the element of the destiny. This history teaches us not to be false-fased person, do  not  exposed to the influence of others, and the most important to be yourself in different situations, especially in relations with family, friends and your lovers.

 The events in the analysed story happen in Trysdale’s bachelor apartments after the marriage ceremony of a girl he was going to marry but he’d lost her. While standing there and putting his gloves off he tries to understand why it’s happened. Trysdale is filled with bitterness and perplexity. The atmosphere in the room is dull like Trysdale's thoughts. He thinks about the last few hours. Why is he so gloomy? There was the wedding of woman he loved and he even proposed to her.

 From the viewpoint of presentation the story is the 3rd person narration.