The Last Leaf is one of the stories of O.Henry in his collection The Trimmed Lamp and Other Story in 1907. Set in a village during a pneumonia epidemic, the story is about a young woman who is seriously ill with pneumonia.
Johnsy, her name, believes that when the ivy vine on the wall outside her window loses all its leaves, she will also die. The doctor visits and tells Sue, her best friend, that Johnsy has a one in ten chance of living, and that her only chance is to “want to live”.
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Meanwhile, their neighbour Behrman, an unsuccessful artist, has tried and failed his whole life to paint a masterpiece. He may be an alcoholic but he is protective to the both women. Upon knowing Johnsy’s fixation on the last leaf, he tricks her by painting a leaf on the wall. One day, a storm came and Johnsy was sure that the last leaf on the ivy vine had fallen. However, as Sue pulls up the shade covering the window, they see that the last leaf is still clinging tenaciously to the vine. Later in the story, the doctor visits again and gives Johnsy a good prognosis, predicting that she will recover. Days after, both women find out that their neighbor Behrman died of pneumonia because he stayed the whole night painting outside the night of the storm.
Ultimately, Behrman’s “great masterpiece” is not a typical painting, but a single leaf he has painted onto the wall—a leaf so realistic that both Johnsy and Sue believe it is truly the last leaf on the vine. This masterpiece saves Johnsy’s life by returning her will to live.
The main theme in this story is selflessness and sacrifice. When Behrman finds out that Johnsy is convinced that she will die once the last ivy leaf falls, Behrman selflessly gets out in the rain and snow in the middle of the night to paint an ivy leaf on the brick wall. Another theme of this story is friendship: the bond between Sue andJohnsy. Sue didn’t give up on Johnsy’s recovery and stayed with her until the end.
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