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The Last Leaf is a short story by O. Henry published in his 1907 collection The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories. The story first appeared on October 15, 1905, in the New York World. [1] [2] The story is set in Greenwich Village during a pneumonia epidemic. It tells the story of an old artist who saves the life of a young neighbouring artist ...
- United States
- Short story
- The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories
- English
The stories of the US short-story writer O. Henry, real name William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), are characterised by their irony and by their surprise endings, which became something of a signature of a good O. Henry short story. The 1907 story ‘The Last Leaf’ is among his most famous: along with ‘The Gift of the Magi’ it may be the ...
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Full Story Summary. Sue and Johnsy are two young female artists who share a studio apartment in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. A pneumonia outbreak is spreading across the city, and Johnsy is one of its victims. Concerned about her condition, her doctor and Sue convene in the hallway outside the apartment to discuss it ...
The Last Leaf, short story by O. Henry, published in 1907 in his collection The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories. “The Last Leaf” concerns Johnsy, a poor young woman who is seriously ill with pneumonia. She believes that when the ivy vine on the wall outside her window loses all its leaves, she will.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
“The Last Leaf” ends with one of O. Henry’s famous surprise endings: the “last leaf” is in fact a painting by Behrman. This seems to confirm what Sue and Behrman believed all along: that it wasn’t the survival of the leaf that mattered, but the rekindling of Johnsy’s hope. In a further twist, it is not Johnsy who dies, but Behrman.
Like “The Last Leaf,” “The Gift of the Magi” is concerned with themes of love and sacrifice. O. Henry’s short stories also often draw attention to social issues such as poverty and homelessness, the role of women in society, the compensation of artists, and the problems and advantages of urban life.
Full Story Analysis. Previous. Its surprising twist aside, O. Henry’s “The Last Leaf” emphasizes the power of art to inspire hope and longing for life. In the story’s exposition, the narrator introduces the setting, Greenwich Village, where artists have flocked to form a community. Sue, the story’s protagonist, shares a studio ...
