Page 7 - DENG105_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_II

Elective English–II

Notes painting. They become intimate friends and set up a common studio in a cheap rented house.
The humorous beginning arrests the attention of the readers and relieves the tension that
awaits them.
After a serio-comic introduction comes the central situation. One day Johnsy is attacked with
pneumonia. She becomes gradually weak in body and mind. She is possessed with death wish.
There is an ivy vine on the yard near Johnsy’s window. She looks at the window and counts
the leaves backward that were falling and associates her longevity with the fall of leaves. She
has an uncanny feeling that her life will end with the fall of the last leaf of the ivy creeper.
The doctor tells Johnsy that her life depends on her wish to live. If a patient loses her will
power to live, no disease can be resisted. Johnsy does not like eating and drinking. She only
looks vacantly at the window counting the number of leaves falling. Her friend Sue tries to
divert her mind from the window. She sits by Johnsy so that the latter will be inspired to live
for painting. She offers her broth, wine, milk and tries to take her mind from death wish but
she cannot succeed. The strange fancy that takes hold of her mind cannot be removed.
Sue tells this strange fancy of Johnsy to the old painter Behrman who lives downstairs. As a
painter he is a failure. But he has the ambition to paint a masterpiece. Behrman loves these
two young painters and protects them as guardians. He dismisses this fancy as foolish. He
comes upstairs with Sue to pose for as her model for the old hermit miner. A persistent cold
rain is falling mingled with snow.
Next morning Johnsy asks Sue to draw up the green skin of the window. To their surprise they
find the last leaf standing out against the brick wall in spite of the beating rain and fierce gusts
of wind throughout the night. The last leaf survives the rain and wind. Johnsy’s wish to live
revives. Throughout the day and the next night the leaf clings to its stem against the wall.
Johnsy considers herself a bad girl to think of death. The last leaf continues to live and so she
will live. She calls for foods and assures herself that one day she will paint her masterpiece
– the Bay of Naples. She is declared out of danger by the doctor after two days.
Then there is the characteristic twist. The mystery is clear. On the dreadful night Old Behrman
paints the green leaf on the stem. That is why it neither moves nor flutters. The painted leaf
has given the illusion of living leaf and Johnsy has got back her urge to live. Johnsy is out of
danger but Behrman dies of pneumonia. Painting is made in sufferings and saves the life of
morbid Johnsy. Art triumphs over death. Life is immortalised by the touch of art. This ironical
twist to the plot makes the story so interesting. It comes so unexpectedly yet convincing with
a delightful tragic-comic note.

1.1 Introduction to the Author

William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry’s
short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterisation and clever twist endings.
William Sydney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. His
middle name at birth was Sidney; he changed the spelling to Sydney in 1898. His parents were
Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–1888), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter
(1833–1865). They were married on April 20, 1858. When Porter was three, his mother died of
tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the house of his maternal grandmother. As a
child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dim novels; his favourite works
were Lane’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter’s elementary school in 1876. He then
enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was

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