The Last Leaf by O'Henry

“The Last Leaf"

By O'Henry

Author	: O. Henry
Country	: United States
Language	: English
Genre(s)	: Short story
Published in	: The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories
Publication date	: 1907

I like this short story because very touchable. It's about the sacrifice.

The story begins in The old Greenwich village in which painters come to set up their art studio has curious maze streets criss-crossing one another.

Sue and Johnsy, They met together suddenly at a hotel and found themselves sharing taste chicory salad, bishop sleeves and in painting. They become intimate friends and in a cheap rented house two friends Sue and Johnsy set up a common studio. The humours beginning arrest the attention of the readers and relive the tension that awaits them. “At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hote of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.” (Paragraph 3)

After introduction, comes the central situation. One day on 1 November, Johnsy is attacked with pneumonia. She becomes gradually weak in body and mind. She is possessed with death wish. There is an ivy vine on the yard near the Johnsy’s window. She looks at the window and counts the leaves backward that were falling and associates her longevity with the fall of leaves. She has an uncanny feeling that her life will end with the fall of the last leaf of the ivy creeper. The doctor tells Sue that her life depends on her wish to live. If a patient loses her will power to live, no disease can be resisted. Johnsy does not like eating and drinking. She only looks vacantly at the window counting the number of leaves falling. Her friend Sue tries to divert her mind from the window. She sits by her for painting so that she will be inspired to live for painting. She offers her broth, wine, milk and she tries to take her mind from death wish but she cannot succeed. The strange fancy that takes hold of her mind cannot be removed. “That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colon); touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short- breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.” (Paragraph 4)

Sue tells this strange fancy of Johnsy to the old painter Behrman who lives downstairs. As a painter he is a failure. But he has the ambition to paint a masterpiece. Behrman loves these two young painters and protects them as guardians. He dismisses this fancy as foolish. He comes upstairs with Sue to pose for as her model for the old hermit miner. A persistent cold rain is falling mingled with snow.

Next morning Johnsy asked Sue to draw up the green skin of the window. To their surprise they find the last leaf standing out against the brick wall in spite of the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind throughout the night. The last leaf survives the rain and winds. Johnsy’s wish to live revives. Throughout the day and the next night the leaf clings to its stem against the wall. Johnsy considers her a bad girl to think of death. The last leaf continues to live and so she will live. She calls for foods and assures herself that one day she will paint her masterpiece – the Bay of Naples. She is declared out of danger by the doctor after two days. “

Then there is the characteristic twist. The mystery is clear. On the dreadful night Old Behrman painted the green leaf on the stem. That is why it neither moves nor flutters. The painted leaf has given the illusion of living leaf and Johnsy has got back her urge to live. Johnsy is out of danger but Behrman dies of Pneumonia. Painting made in sufferings and saves the life of morbid Johnsy. Art triumphs over death. Life is immortalized by the touch of art. This ironical twist to the plot makes the story so interesting. If comes so unexpectedly yet convincing with a delightful tragic-comic note.

All these characteristics of a good short story are fulfilled in the short story of O Henry’s The Last Leaf. It has an ironical twist at the end that is surprising and at the same time striking to the readers. Old Behrman’s bold self sacrifice for the young Johnsy comes unexpectedly to the readers, but none the less convincing and admirable.