‘The Last Leaf’, first published in O Henry’s collection ‘The Trimmed Lamp’, is quite a moving story that cherishes the treasury of life and the existence of faith and hope. While the story is set in Greenwich village, New York, it speaks volumes on the many battles humans strife through their journey of life.
The story presents the life of three struggling artists – Sue (who was from Maine), Johnsy (who was from California) and old Behrman. They live an impoverished life in an artists’ colony in Greenwich village. It is an area marked by low rents. Thus we understand that they belong to the lower strata of the society and strive hard for success while hoping to make it big one day. They understand each other's fate very well and yet support each other even at the cost of their own life. They may be impoverished but their lives are splendid. The notion of friendship and self-sacrifice is the central idea of the story and keeps the reader hooked till the end.
The story commences in Sue and Johnsy’s jointly owned apartment, that is at the top of an old three-story brick house, in an artists’ colony of Greenwich village. The two friends also use this apartment as their studio.
In the month of November, Johnsy comes down with a serious attack of pneumonia. The disease has a bad reputation in this village and seems to have taken several lives. When Sue calls for the doctor, she is told that her friend Johnsy has slim chances of survival. This was not because of her physical illness, but more because Johnsy had foolishly associated her chances of survival to that of the falling leaves of the ivy-tree.
We are then introduced to Behrman, an old artist who was way past sixty years in age. He lived on the ground floor of the same apartment as that of Sue and Johnsy. He comes forward to help Sue in saving Johnsy’s life.
The story while maintaining the surprise elements, ends with a sting in the tail. Throughout the story, we read that Johnsy was ill and was expected to die with the fall of the last leaf. However, Behrman who paints the last leaf on the wall and battles the stormy night dies of pneumonia. Behrman was successful both in painting his masterpiece and in saving Johnsy’s life. Though Behrman appears once and speaks only twice in the story, his affection for Johnsy and Sue is well manifested in the story through his sacrifice. He thus becomes the very epitome of the theme of the story that self-sacrifice through love for others achieves happiness. The unexpected ending not only creates hope for other artists like Behrman but also recognizes him as a typical O Henry hero.
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The dog danced across the snowy field
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in the beginning, there was only Chaos. Dense darkness covered everything until the Earth was born out of Chaos and the mountains, the sea, and then the sky with the sun, the moon and the stars. Then Uranus and Earth came together and gave birth to the Titans. But, Uranus was afraid that one of his children would take his throne. That is why he enclosed every one of them in the depths of the Earth. But his son, Cronus, the strongest of the Titans, defeated him and became world leader. He married Rhea, who gave birth to two gods and three goddesses: Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Hestia and Demeter. But Cronus inherited the fear of his father and believed that one of his offspring would later take his throne. So, when they were born, he swallowed them. However, Rhea was expecting a sixth child and fearing it would share the same fate with her other children, she secretly gave birth on a mountain in Crete and hid the newborn there. She named the child Zeus. She also tricked Cronus into thinking he swallowed this child too, by giving him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which Cronus swallowed thinking it was his newborn. The Nymphs took care of Zeus and fed the baby with the milk of a goat. When he grew up, Zeus found his father and tricked him into drinking a mixture of wine and mustard, which caused him to disgorge the contents of his stomach. Zeus’ older brothers and sisters came out of Cronus fully grown! This is how the great Titanomachy began, the war between the Titans and the Gods, with Zeus as their leader. This titanic battle lasted for ten years. The gods defeated the Titans and threw them into Tartarus, a dark and gloomy place as far from the earth as earth is from the sky. Thus, Zeus became the ruler of the whole world and he and the other gods settled in Olympus.
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