Rona Angela S. Anastacio November
29, 2019
11 – Onesta’ Ms.
Rogielyn Baloto
The
Last Leaf
By:
O. Henry (1862-1910)
The story “The Last Leaf”, by O.
Henry, was published in 1907. The story’s main idea symbolizes “hope”. That
hope symbolizes the last leaf which empowers a person to have strength to fight
death. The last leaf would make Johnsy believe that her life is too cease with
its fall was so firm that no miraculous drug could protect her against
rigidity. This book is all about Sue, Johnsy, Behrman and the doctor but mainly
focuses to Sue and Johnsy. Sue and Johnsy are friends. Both Sue and Johnsy know
each other because they have the same passion, hobby and likes. Both of them
are painters, they know each other because of their love for art.
“The last leaf” takes place at
Greenwich Village. There’s a Bohemian neighborhood in New York City in the
early 20th century. The winding streets of the neighborhood is an
ideal home for artists. The area is hard and difficult to find then the tax
collectors are navigating it. Sue and Johnsy are both artists that met in a
restaurant. They discover their likes in art and they decided to work and live
together. They doesn’t have a not-so-expensive studio which is located at an
apartment building and they are sharing that studio. There is someone who
visits, a stranger named “Mr. Pneumonia”, and people begin to become ill. With
the case of Pneumonia, Johnsy has one out of ten chance of living and because
of it her only chance is the “want to live” because Depression can be as deadly
as Pneumonia. The doctor’s medicine will have no effect and can’t recover her
health. The doctor is curious if Johnsy is feeling depressed about something.
Sue mention the unfulfilled ambition of her to paint the “The Bay of Naples”, but
the doctor releases this and asked Johnsy if she is depressed over a man. His
suspicion was wrong, then, Sue tells him that in Johnsy’s life, there’s no man.
Sue sits with Johnsy’s bedside working on an illustration for a magazine while
Johnsy counts the leaves that are falling from the vine outside her window.
Johnsy claims that she will die when the last leaf falls to the ground.
Sue tells Johnsy that the doctor has
given a good chance of recovery (which is not true, a lie). She give promises
to Johnsy that she’ll buy more food and drink; a wine, after she sells the
illustration, but Johnsy became unresponsive when Sue takes an action to cheer
her up and she ask Sue to draw in another room. She wants to “turn lose my hold
on everything, and go sailing down, down just like one of those poor, tired
leaves”, Johnsy says. An unsuccessful artist named Behrman, who is earning small
income as a model for artist in Greenwich Village, Sue visits him, the
alcoholic, old and downstairs neighbor. Behrman, was the one who tried and
failed his whole life to paint a masterpiece. When Sue pulls up the shade
covering the window in the morning, the last leaf is still clinging closely to
the vine.
Johnsy was sure that it would have
fallen at night but it will fall today instead and when it does, she will go
to, she added. Johnsy is silent when Sue asks her to reconsider. Johnsy sits up
and asks for a soup and a mirror, after the night of wind and rain, the last
leaf from the vine fails to move. When she asks for a mirror, she wants to
remark “something made that the last leaf stay there to show me how sinful I
was, it is a sin to want to die.” Her ambition to paint the “Bay of Naples”
Johnsy later mentions. The doctor visit and gives Johnsy a good ailment,
predicting if she will recover. The doctor tells the women that he has to visit
another patient which is Behrman. Behrman got Pneumonia and was needed to be
brought to the hospital. After that day, a news were told to Johnsy by Sue
which is Behrman died already. He was found sick inside his room dressed in
cold and wet clothes, the janitor found out. Behrman had ladders and painting
materials inside his room which reveals or shows that he had stayed out all
night, painting the image of a leaf onto the wall so that Johnsy would think
that the last leaf made it through the storm. Finally and lastly, Behrman has
painted his masterpiece, Sue noticed.
✅
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