The last Leaf The American short story writer O.

Henry was born under the name William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1862. His short stories are well known throughout the world; noted for their witticism, clever wordplay, and unexpected endings. Like many other writers, O. Henry's early career wandered across different activities and professions before he found his calling as a short story writer. He started working in his uncle's drugstore in 1879 and became a licensed pharmacist by the age of 19. His first creative expressions came while working in the pharmacy. He would sketch the townspeople that frequented the store and was admired for his artistic skills.

A woman named Johnsy has come down with pneumonia, and is now close to death. Outside the window of her room, the leaves fall from a vine. Johnsy decides that when the last leaf drops, she too will die, while her friend Sue tries to tell her to stop thinking so pessimistically. In the same apartment building, an elderly, frustrated artist named Behrman lives below Johnsy and Sue. Behrman has been claiming that he will paint a masterpiece, even though he has never even attempted to start. Sue visits Behrman, telling him that Johnsy, who is dying of pneumonia, is losing her will to live. Sue tells Behrman that Johnsy claims she will die when the last leaf falls off of the vine outside her window. Behrman scoffs at this as foolishness, butas he is protective of the two young artistshe decides to visit Johnsy and see the vine from her window. In the night, a very bad storm comes and wind is howling and rain is splattering against the window. Sue closes the curtains and tells Johnsy to go to sleep, even though there is still one leaf left on the vine. Johnsy protests against having the curtains closed, but Sue insists on doing so because she doesn't want Johnsy to see the last leaf fall. In the morning, Johnsy wants to see the vine to be sure that all the leaves are gone, but to their surprise, there is still one leaf left. While Johnsy is surprised that it is still there, she insists it will fall that day. But it doesn't, nor does it fall through the night nor the next day. Johnsy believes that the leaf stayed there to show how wicked she was, and that she sinned in wanting to die. She regains her will to live, and makes a full recovery throughout the day. In the afternoon, a doctor talks to Sue. The doctor says that Mr. Behrman has come down with pneumonia and, as there is nothing to be done for him, he is being taken to the hospital to be made comfortable in his final hours. A janitor had found him helpless with pain, and his shoes and clothing were wet and icy cold. The janitor couldn't figure out where he had been on that stormy night, though she had found a lantern that was still lit, a ladder that had been moved, some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it. "Look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell." The short story by O'Henry "The Last Leaf" fits into the fiction drama genre and short tales/fables. The characters are all struggling artists living in Greenwich Village, New

York. The young woman develops pneumonia and her health regresses to the point that she has no energy left to fight to live. Instead, she waits for death to come by watching a small leaf on a vine. She believes that when the leaf falls, she will also die. A fellow artist paints a leaf on the wall to replicate the leaf that the girl has been watching to fall. Since the leaf does not fall, she regains her strength and health. The main idea of the story The last leaf is HOPE. Hope is the hero of that story. On one hand, when Johnsy is hopeless, she makes her steps closer to death. However she changes when she finds the leaf. On the other hand, Mr. Behrman dies after he becomes hopeful. However, he dies with success. The will to live, to survive is another name of the hero. Johnsy has started the countdown to her own death by the use of the falling last leafs of an ivy vine, one could declare that will basically non-existent. When she was give the hope she had the will and desire to live. The beginning of the story is usual, it begin with description of the place in west of Washington, In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." O. Henry takes a very interesting tone; it is almost condescending and sarcastic. He seems to be making fun of all of his characters, deriding them for shallowness. They are flippant and ineffectual. He makes fun of the entire neighborhood of Greenwich Village, and creates several characters of the sort he seems to encounter there, only to mock them. But then the very end takes all of that and slaps it with a very serious, dreadful ending, which seems to indicate that careless conversation and attitudes can have devastating effects. The climax of the story would be when Johnsy and Susie are watching and waiting for that last leaf to fall. When it doesn't, and Johnsy decides to live, we have the resolution. However, the dramatic ending is a very intense and powerful finale, one that seems to mirror a climax in its importance. In the short story The Last Leaf, by O. Henry, Sue and Johnsy met and decided to share a flat in May. In December, pneumonia started making the rounds in their neighborhood. Johnsy got sick, and the Doctor told Sue that Johnsy had a 1 in 10 chance in surviving depending upon her attitude. Sue moved her painting supplies into Johnsy room to keep her company, and became puzzled when Johnsy started saying . . .twelve, eleven, ten . . . She was counting leaves on the vine outside of their window, and she informed Sue that she expected to die when the last leaf fell. Shortly thereafter, Sue was asking their old German neighbor Mr. Behrman to pose for her painting, and they got into a discussion about Johnsy, and she told Behrman that Johnsy expected to die when the last leaf fell from the vine. Behrman who was an artist whod never painted a master piece agreed to sit for Sue, but when they look at the window at the vine they notice that the pounding rain and ice has knocked the last leaf off of the vine. After painting Behrman, Sue falls asleep. The next day when Johnsy demands the blinds be raised so that she can see the vine, she notices there is still a leaf. The leaf stays and stays, and Johnsy decides shell survive. The next day they

learn that Behrman has died of pneumonia, and Sue tells Johnsy the leaf Behrman painted outside the window was his lifes masterpiece. I think the ending of the story is unexpected, because, when we read from the beginning we understand that our character will die when the last leaf will fall down, but she is alive. The hope in the ending make us to think that the life have a very pretty parts. "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." The two most important characters of the short story. Mr.Pneumonia. The killer disease which plays so important a role is personified by O.Henry in this short story. "The busy doctor" who treats Joanna and "Old Behrman." and the last one, Old Behrman, who was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. In this short story by O. Henry, Sue is an artist, who lives with Johnsy her roommate. She is young, and part of the "artist" scene of Greenwich Village, of which O. Henry writes about in a rather mocking tone. She is independent-minded. When the doctor inquires if a man is the root of Johnsy's stress, Sue scoffs, A man?...Is a man worth-" indicating that she and Johnsy don't give men a second thought, but are instead independent women content being on their own. Sue also has dramatic mood shifts; after the doctor leaves she "cries a Japanese napkin to a pulp," but then immediately cheers up and goes into Johnsy's room, "whistling ragtime" and proceeds to paint to earn some money. Overall, she is a caring individual, waiting on Johnsy and hoping for her recovery. She is friendly to the burly Behrman downstairs, even though he makes fun of her and Johnsy for their silly feminine ways. Johnsy is a young woman from California who has come to New York to be an artist. Physically, all we really know about her is that she is small -- she is described as a "mite of a little woman." Emotionally, I would say that Johnsy is a little immature, at least in my opinion. To me, a person who would convince herself that the span of her life is controlled by a leaf on a vine is not someone who thinks clearly. It seem superstitious to me, and that seems immature. I suppose you might say she's mentally strong because she can convince herself to live or die. But I feel it's a bit of a negative quality because of what I've said above. "The Last Leaf" by O. Henry is less funny and entertaining than other O. Henry stories, but it still carries a sarcastic tone that shadows much of it; it's like he is telling the story but not quite taking it seriously himself. He makes a bit of fun of the residents of the neighborhood that the story is set in, Greenwich Village. He writes: "So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a 'colony.'" So, the story starts off with that rather

bemused and sarcastic tone, which he keeps a thread of throughout the entire story. But, the mood turns a little bit more serious as he describes how Johnsy is hit by pneumonia. So, he has introduced a very serious illness into a story that started off as satirical; do we take the piece seriously, or with amusment? It's a rather odd combination that continues throughout the entire piece: he introduces characters through insults and sarcasm, then asks us to care about those characters when bad things happen to them. The conclusion is friendship and sacrifice for others is basically the theme of this work, but O'Henry's understated manner of telling the story emphasizes the fact that sacrifice can be hidden in love. The story gives the best conclusion for sacrificial love: " . . . look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiecehe painted it there the night that the last leaf fell. Greater love has no man than he who lays down his life for another. That is your conclusion if you think about it. Think about how unselfish Johnsy's friends are. Look at her reaction to the leaf and how she realizes suddenly that SHE has been selfish. A masterpiece, that leaf, was all she needed and all the old man could give. The hope for life make you to feel melancholically. I think that story is the same like quote: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present. , but the present is their love and the leaf who dont fall down.

Ratoi Elena, L24E