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.
