The family Picture of O' Henry
Summary of The Last Leaf by O’ Henry (Oct 11, 2017)
Sue and Johnsy lived at the top floor of a
building. They had met at a restaurant
and found that they had similar tastes. They liked the same kind of art, the
same kind of food and the same kind of clothes. So they became friends and
opened a joint studio.
It happened in spring season and now it was winter
season. As Jonhsy had a lean and thin structure of body, she was more prone to
fall ill. Sue was healthier than Johnsy, who became a victim of pneumonia. The
writer uses the technique of personification here. He describes pneumonia in
terms of an old gentle man. The writer calls it ‘a gentleman’ in satirical way.
A gentleman never harms anybody. But here this so called gentleman was touching
people here and there with its icy fingers to make them victims of pneumonia.
Johnsy became one of its victims. So she lay on her bed feeling sick.
A doctor started treating her and
visited her daily. One day, he called Sue aside in the room. He told her that
Johnsy’s chances of survival were only ten percent. She has lost hope in life. If any patient
becomes hopeless about life, his medicines prove futile (useless). They do not
have any good effect on the patient. The only remedy (way-out) to save her is
to create in her a will-power to live. Saying this, the doctor left the room.
The doctor also advised Sue as to how she could instill (fill, create) in her
the will to live. She could talk about good and positive things like wearing
new winter clothes, etc.
After that Sue entered Johnsy’s room
and noticed that she was watching outside through the window of her room. She
was looking very lean and thin. She was counting back: twelve….eleven…ten and
so on. Sue was amazed to note that. Then she saw what she was watching. She
found an ivy-vine that clung to the wall of the house just opposite to the wall
that was having a window in Johnsy’s room.
The Ivy-vine
The Ivy-vine
Sue asked her as to what she was counting. In the meantime, Johnsy
uttered (spoke) ‘six’ and then ‘five’.
Sue asked her what the five meant to her. Johnsy spoke in a very feeble
(weak) voice that it was a leaf. She further told Sue that with the fall of the
last leaf, she would also die. She continued saying that there were one hundred
leaves on the ivy-vine, but now they are falling down one by one. She also
reminded Sue what the doctor had told her. He had told her that her chance to
live was only one out of ten.
Sue called it foolishness to think
like that. She assured (made her believe) her that her chance to live was very
good as the doctor had told her that very morning. She advised Johnsy to eat
something. She also told her that she was to work on her new painting and after
selling that, she would be able to buy something for her to eat to make her
strong again. But Johnsy told her that she had no need to bother about her and
kept watching outside the window. Then she uttered that another leaf had also
fallen and she did not want to eat anything because only four leaves had been
left there. She wanted to see the last one fall down before night.
After that Sue asked Johnsy in a mild
(polite) tone if she could stop watching outside the window and close her eyes.
She also told her that she wanted to complete her painting and she needed
Behrman to sit in front of her like a model. She wanted to paint a man like
him.
Behrman was also a painter, who lived
at the first floor of that building. He had a burning desire in his heart to
paint his master piece, that is a great painting. But for the last forty years,
his canvas had been waiting for that. His means of livelihood is the money he
receives from people who want to paint him in their pictures. He used to drink alcohol
in plenty, but he was a very good human being.
When Sue went to meet him downstairs,
he had been drinking. She knew this by
smelling. She told him that Jonhsy had become hopeless about living. Her hold
on life was getting weaker and weaker. She was afraid that she had attached her
days of life with the dropping of leaves of an ivy-vine. She thinks that with
the fall of the last leaf, she would also die. Behrman reacted strongly to it
and wondered how people in the world could believe that death comes with the
falling of leaves. He advises Jonhsy not to let such ideas enter her mind. Sue
told her that she was sick and due to that such ideas entered her mind.
Finally, he agreed to reach upstairs to help her. Johnsy was sleeping at that
time when they reached there. Both of them looked out of the window and found
that there was only one leaf left on the vine.
Behrman sat in front of Sue and she
made her painting through most of the night.
The next morning, Sue went in Johnsy’s
room. She found Johnsy watching with wide eyes towards the window. Johnsy
requested Sue to open the window as she wanted to see the last leaf. It had
rained heavily and a strong wind blew throughout the night. So she thought that
the last leaf must have fallen down. But, when Sue removed the cover, Johnsy
saw that the last leaf was there stuck on the wall. She was amazed to see that.
But still, she was thinking that the leaf would fall down if the strong wind
and rain persisted during the day and the night. Sue was much worried about her
friend.
The day passed and then the night and
it was much stormy and wild. The next day came and early in the morning Jonhsy
was curious to see the last leaf on the wall. She continued looking out of the
window in wonder. The last leaf was still there stuck on the wall.
A ray of hope dawned in her mind. She
told her friend Johnsy that the last leaf remained there stuck on the wall
because it wanted to prove that she was a bad girl. Then she expressed her
desire to eat something. She felt that it was wrong to think about death. She
also wanted to look at her face into the mirror. An hour later, she also hoped
to paint the Bay of Naples.
The Bay Of Naples
The doctor came to see her in the afternoon. He was
very happy to find improve improvement in Johnsy and advised Sue to keep on
caring for her and with the passage of time, she would become better. After
that, he told Sue that he had to see another patient whose name was Behrman and
who was suffering from pneumonia. He was a painter and his condition was very
critical, so he would be shifted to some hospital for his treatment.
That afternoon, Sue told Johnsy that Behrman
died of pneumonia that day as he had been suffering from it for the last two
days. Someone found him in his room ill in the morning of the first day. It
happened that he had gone in the open that rainy and stormy night to paint leaf
on the wall because the last leaf had fallen due to fast wind. He did so to
save the life of Johnsy. He wanted to create hope for life in her heart. He did
not care for the storm and the rain. He took his ladder, brush and some paint
and made an artificial leaf that looked real on the wall. Thus he died for a
great cause, that is, to save human life. His painted leaf on the wall became
his masterpiece. In this way, an ordinary person made his supreme sacrifice.
Lesson 9: The Last Leaf
QA. Comprehension
Questions
& Answers
[These are sample answers.
You can also use your own language to write better answers.}
Q1. What do you know about the cold
unseen stranger?
Ans. The
narrator calls Mr. Pneumonia ‘the cold unseen stranger’. It is invisible to
all, so it is called unseen and cold because cold icy winds cause it. It is a stranger
because no one knows it. Pneumonia, the disease called influenza, has been
personified here. He moves in the narrow streets of the town with long steps.
He makes people its victims by touching them with his icy fingers. He is no
more an old gentleman. Johnsy has also become its victim along with other
people.
Q2.What are the doctor’s verdict
regarding Johnsy’s illness?
Ans. The
doctor’s verdict (decision) about Johnsy’s illness was that her chances of
recovery were ten out of hundred. It was very low chance for her survival (life).
Q3. What was the scene outside
Johnsy’s window?
Ans. There
was an open yard, just below the window of Johnsy’s room. At some distance from
the wall, there was another wall of a house. An old ivy vine, with very less leafs
remaining on it, climbed up to the half distance on that wall. The ivy vine was
very old and it had become twisted and decayed (rotten) at the roots.
Q4. What did Johnsy look like with
her eyes closed? What was she tired of? What did she want?
Ans. Johnsy
looked white and still (motionless) like a fallen statue when she lay on her
bed with closed eyes. She was tired of watching and counting leafs on the
ivy-vine outside the window of her room. She wanted to loosen the grip on her
life and sail away like a falling leaf. Actually she wanted to die.
Q5. Write a character of old Behrman.
Ans. Behrman
was an old painter with a flowing beard and body like that of an imp. He was a
failure in art. His canvas had been waiting for a masterpiece for the last forty
years. He earned very little money by sitting as a model in front of the young
artists who wanted to make his portrait. He drank gin in plenty (very
much). He disliked softness in anyone. He had a knd hear. That was why, he
sacrificed his own life while saving Johnsy’s . That was his supreme sacrifice.
His painted leaf became his masterpiece because it saved someone’s life.
Q6. How did Behrman die? Did he paint
his masterpiece?
Ans. Behrman
knew that Johnsy would die if the last leaf on the wall fell down. He was sure
that the leaf would not stay there on the wall due to stormy weather. So he
took a ladder, a lantern, material for painting. He did not care for the cold
wind and rain and painted a leaf that looked real on the wall. But he became
victim of pneumonia and died very soon. Johnsy recovered from her illness to
see the painted leaf the on wall. Thus, that leaf became his master-piece.
QB. Word-meanings:
1. Squatty: low, sunken, stunted 2.
Congenial: friendly, compatible 3. Chivalric: gallant, courageous, noble,
valiant 4.curative: having curing power, healthful, medicinal 5. Swaggered:
walked in a showy manner 7. Elegant: graceful, rich-looking, attractive
8.broth: thick soup 9. Hermit: any person having religious ideas and living in loneliness 10. Imp: small evil
spirit,
a mischievous child, 11. Serrated: having sharp ends 12. Fragile: that can be
broken easily, weak 13. Flibbertigibbet: excessively talkative, having odd
ideas 14 gnarled: twisted 15. Persistent: unpleasantly continuing, not ready to
stop in spite of opposition.
QC. Ans.1 Sue Ans 2. Behrman Ans. 3 : Johnsy Ans. 4. Sue
Ans. 5. Doctor
Q.D Read the
stanzas…
.Extract A : It is the last one….. Ans
1. Johnsy was trying to say that she would die the moment the last leaf
fell down. Ans. 2: Johnsy had lost her will to
live. She thought that she would die as the last leaf on the vine fell
down. Ans3. She asked Johnsy what she would do if she (Johnsy) died. Ans. 4
The soul that is about to leave this physical world is the lonesomest soul in the
world. Q5. What was happening to Johnsy
one by one. Ans5. She was becoming more and more sad and hopeless about her recovery from illness with the leafs falling one
by one.
Extract B Ans
1. ‘Him’ is Behrman. He was ill for two days.
Ans. 2
They were wet because of rain.
Ans 3.
The ladder and the lantern indicate that Behrman had used them in the stormy night
to paint the last leaf on the wall to save Johnsy’s life.
Ans. 4 The
last leaf was not the real one. It did not move in the story wind. It was still
and motionless. It was still green.
Ans 5. Those were used by Behrman for painting the last leaf on the wall to save
Johnsy’s life.
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