The Last Leaf Review free essay sample

O Henry always has me saying O marvelous! The gruesome plots, the careful work on the minutest of the minute details, the unpredictable surprise endings, the imaginative use of connotation and so much more. He dared to personify the dreadful Pneumonia as the cold, unseen stranger! THE LAST LEAF remains one of my favorite short stories written by him. The plot revolves around two artist girls Sue and Johnsy who have their own studio in quaint old Greenwich Village. Theirs was a relationship fostered on mutual trust and their common tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves! All went hunky dory till Johnsy fell ill with pneumonia one cold November month. The disease seemed to drain out the last streaks of will and womanly taste from her being. She lay all day on her bed awaiting her death, looking out of the window listlessly. The doctor put her chances at one-in-ten, which he swelled up to one-in-five if Sue managed to get Johnsy to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves! Here the author tries to cook up humor from a womans natural eye for fashion. We will write a custom essay sample on The Last Leaf Review or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Distressed by the doctors verdict Sue cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp another typical womanly reaction! She, at no cost, wanted to lose a friend who had so much in common with her and who had, for the past one year, been her staunch companion in everything from her artistic conquests to her personal trivia. With a heavy heart she gathered her drawing board and paintbrush (and a great amount of will) and made her way into Johnsys room. Johnsy lay there still as death itself. Sue began working on an illustration for a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature! Here the author has skillfully rawn a comparison between the two classes of strugglers and brought to light how the two, despite being so different in their genres, together make a wonderful piece! How many of us have actually read up a story because the illustrations were appealing?! Coming back to the story, our heroine Sue sat there in the room sketching with determination, trying to drown her sorrow into her art. Sud denly the sound of low moans broke her trance. She went quickly to Johnsys bedside. She was lying there eyes open wide and fixed outside the window. She was counting counting backwards! Sues solicitous glances found that Johnsy had her eyes on an old, old vine, the leaves of which had been ripped off its body, exposing the rotting skeleton. It had been losing leaves at an alarming rate, from over a hundred leaves on it three days ago to five Just then. In her desperation Johnsy cried out that her life would betray her the day the last leaf fell! Her friend rebuked her with magnificent scorn, calling her a scatterbrain! She declared that she wouldnt leave the room until she saw the last leaf fall off, which she was sure would happen before dark, and prove Johnsys paranoid fears unfounded. On the ground floor of Sues studio lived old Behrman. He was over sixty and sported a long Michael Angelo Moses beard dangling over an impish body. A failure in art his drawing board had waited forty years to receive the first line of the great masterpiece he planned to create! It was still waiting. He made both ends meet by serving as a model to young artists. And Sue was his regular customer. Later that day Sue went over to Behrman to get him to to him. The old man was visibly stupefied at what he heard and blabbered about illogical people of the world. Nevertheless, Sue went back home once her work was done. Days passed and the old vine started making small steps to becoming bald! As each day came and went, its leaves bid adieu one after the other. And Johnsy her belief was becoming a reality! She was slowly slipping away into death. So the leaves fell one after the other until one very last! Johnsy busied herself bidding her final farewell to the world. Days slipped away like sand; soon and fast, but the last leaf refused to fall off, determined not to betray its naked host! Rain, shine or the twilight, nothing could possibly make it part ways with the vine. The young woman waited and she waited still and then her patience wore off. The concluded that God didnt want her in his kingdom and realized that asking for death was a sin. For the first time through her illness she asked for her broth without waiting for Sue to Jostle it down her throat. Soon she was her true self again up and about! One afternoon as the two girls sat knitting, Sue broke the news of old Behrmans death from pneumonia. He was found cold and wet and in pain and beside him was a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it. No one had wondered why the last leaf never fluttered, never moved Behrman had finally delivered his masterpiece! He had painted it the night the last leaf fell!