Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Initial Situation
Stage Identification: Soapy realizes winter is coming.
Explanation/Discussion: We first meet Soapy on his bench in Madison Square in New York City. A dead leaf falls on his shoulder making him realize that winter is coming very soon. Brrrrr…
Conflict
Stage Identification: Soapy is homeless and needs to find a warm place for the winter.
Explanation/Discussion: New York City winters are notoriously harsh. This is a big problem for people like Soapy who live outside. He decides to solve his problem the same way he's solved it for a few years: by getting arrested and sentenced to three months in jail. In jail he can wait out the winter and not have to worry about food or shelter for a while.
Complication
Stage Identification: Soapy can't get arrested.
Explanation/Discussion: Soapy tries breaking a shop window, dining and dashing, pestering a lady, stealing an umbrella, and acting like a drunken maniac. But none of this works. Soapy seems to have some strange immunity to being arrested tonight.
Climax
Stage Identification: Soapy hears the anthem and is inspired to change his life.
Explanation/Discussion: Soapy gives up on trying to get arrested, at least for the night, and walks back to his park bench. On the way, Soapy hears organ music (an anthem) coming from a church. The music and the beautiful, quiet scene make Soapy believe that he can live a better life than he is now. He decides to look for work and try to build a life full of the things he really values – friends, family, nature, and church.
Suspense
Stage Identification: None.
Explanation/Discussion: O. Henry doesn't really give us time to feel any suspense after the climax. Things leap abruptly to the denouement and the ending. If there is a suspense stage in this story, it comes in between the complication and the climax. That is, readers might be in suspense wondering over whether or not Soapy will finally get arrested.
Denouement
Stage Identification: Soapy is arrested.
Explanation/Discussion: Just after Soapy decides that he can think of better way to get food and shelter than getting arrested, he gets arrested. Ironically, he is arrested for doing "Nothin'" (46). He is arrested for being transient or vagrant, for being what he's decided he no longer wants to be, a homeless man.
Conclusion
Stage Identification: Soapy is sentenced to three months in jail.
Explanation/Discussion: This story's conclusion comes at us so fast we might wonder where the rest of it is. But no, it's really just that one line from the judge sentencing Soapy to jail for the winter. If you want to talk more about this, we have lots to say in "What's Up With the Ending?"