The Last Leaf-Questions -Answers

 Questions-Answers on 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 his 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 is 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 a hundred. It was a 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. With very few leaves remaining on it, an old ivy vine 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 leaves 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 kind heart. 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 a victim of pneumonia and died very soon. Johnsy recovered from her illness to see the painted leaf the on the wall. Thus, that leaf became his masterpiece.

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 

6. still: motionless

7. Elegant: graceful, rich-looking, attractive 

8.broth: thick soup 

9. Hermit: any person having religious ideas and  living in loneliness 

10. Imp: a 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 despite opposition

QC. 

Ans.1 Sue to Johnsy   

Ans 2. Behrman to Sue    

Ans. 3 : Johnsy to Sue  

Ans. 4. Sue to Doctor   

Ans. 5. Doctor to sue          

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 most lonesome 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 leaves 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.

 

The Last Leaf by O’ Henry- Detailed Summary

The Last Leaf by O’ Henry- Detailed Summary 

 Sue and Johnsy lived on 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 the spring season and now it was winter season. As Jonhsy was a lean and thin structure of the body, she was more prone to fall ill. Sue was healthier than Johnsy. She became a victim of pneumonia. The writer uses the technique of personification here. He describes pneumonia in terms of an old gentleman. The writer calls it ‘a a gentleman’ in a 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 the wall with a window in Johnsy’s room.   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 on the first floor of that building. He had a burning desire in his heart to paint his masterpiece, which 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 smell. 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 only one leaf 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 in the mirror. An hour later, she also hoped to paint 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 on the morning of the first day. It happened that he had gone in the open that rainy and stormy night to paint a 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.

 

 

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