The text under analysis is a story”The Last Leaf” written by O'Henry. The title of the story is intriguing and thought-provoking. It makes to think what are the connections of the title of the novel and the content of it.
William Sydney Porter, or more famously known by
his pen name O. Henry, was a popular short story writer during the early
twentieth century. A prolific American writer, a master of surprise endings,
who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of a plot
which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance is typical of Henry’s
stories.
The text describes us that Johnsy has fallen ill
and is dying of pneumonia. She watches the leaves fall from a vine outside the
window of her room, and decides that when the last leaf drops, she too will die;
While Sue tries to tell her to stop thinking like that. An old, frustrated
artist named Behrman lives below Johnsy and Sue. He has been claiming that he
will paint a masterpiece, even though he has never even attempted to start.
Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the
night that the last leaf fell…
The scene is laid in Greenwich
Village in a joint studio. It touches upon an important event in the life
of the main characters: Sue and Johnsy. There is ivy out of the window. The
evens take place around this ivy. The leaf is like a symbol of life here. As
for me, the whole story is written in pessimistic mood. The setting of
the events in a given extract is realistic. It is presented in a general way.
The general slant of the text is a 3rd person
narration. It contains different elements: an account of events, portraiture.
The description is intercepted with a dialogue.
There are five characters of the story:
Sue - a young artist.
Johnsy - a young artist.
Behrman - an old artist.
A Doctor.
Mr. Pneumonia.
The main characters are Sue, Johnsy,
and Mr. Behrman . The secondary character is a doctor. Sue, Johnsy, Mr. Behrman
are protagonists and Mr. Pneumonia - antagonist.
Sue is shown as a young girl who is ill. She
think that she will die. Sue is an young artist. She is shown very kind and
good person. Here the author uses indirect characterization of the personages. O'
Henry shows only their acting. For example Sue always takes care about Johnsy.
We can see the attitude of the author to this personage. We can understand from
the context that Sue is a good person. The same I can say about Mr. Behrman.
With the help of the narrative description of
what Mr. Pneumonia is doing, we can guess the author’s attitude towards him.
The killer disease which plays so important a role is personified by
O.Henry in this short story. For example: «a cold, unseen stranger, whom the
doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there
with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting
his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow
and moss-grown "places." Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a
chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California
zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer»
The plot of the story runs as follows:
-introduction (the author with the help of
setting’s description show us the place in which the main events will happen)
-exposition (the main characters Sue, Johnsy,
Mr. Pneumonia are presented after the introduction)
-the story itself (the author tells us about the
illness of one of the girls)
-the climax ( this is the night when the last
leaf was on the tree, the main thing is would it fall down and Johnsy dies or
would it stay and keep Johnsy alive, the night when Mr. Behrman draw his
masterpiece and catch a pneumonia, but about this fact the reader hasn’t known
yet)
- the denouement( the leaf stays on the tree and
Johnsy recovers).
The text includes a number of different
stylistic devices:
Symbolism: The last leaf is the symbol of 'hope' that empowers a person for having
the strength to fight death. Johnsy's believe that the last leaf would
make her life too cease with its fall was so firm that no miraculous drug could
save her against her rigidity. Behrman's wait for the right time to make his
master-piece that he had fancied for so long was over the moment he realized
that he had the ability to save a life by inflicting 'hope' in that person's
mind. The Last Leaf of the ivy vine had the power to sustain Johnsy's life
and Behrman had the power to sustain the last leaf by creating it. This art
gave Johnsy the power to sustain her 'hope' to live and indeed, until hope
persists.
Lexical devices:
Personification: “One street crosses itself a time or two. Here the features of a
person were ascribed to the street.
“The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until
its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks». Here the features of a person were ascribed to the autumn.
“The cold breath of
autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung,
almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.” In this sentence the features of a person were ascribed to the
branches.
“In November a cold,
unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony,
touching one here and there with his icy fingers.”- In these sentence the features of a person were
ascribed to the disease.
“ But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted
iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side
of the next brick house.” In this sentence the features of a person were ascribed to the
disease.
Lexical devises:
Epithet: “ cold stranger, icy fingers, chivalric old gentleman,
red-fisted, greedy-self, a jew’s harp twang, a mite of a little woman”
These devices were used to make the text more
emotional and reinforce the impression about a person who is described with the
help of epithets.
Simile: “ as especial
mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above ,as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock ,she was just like one of those tired leaves, she was lying white as
statue ”. Here the simile is used to show the objects, described here more
clearly. The comparison of two objects helps us better imagine and understand
described object or a person.
Zeugma: “So,
to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for
north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents”,
“ They had met at the table d'hte of an Eighth Street
"Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and
bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.” Zeugma is
used here to create humorous effect.
Irony: “Then
they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth
Avenue, and became a "colony.”, “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 irony shows a positive attitude of a speaker to
the objects, but at the same time expresses a negative evaluation of them.
Comparison: “Why, that’s almost as good a chance as we have
in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new
building”. Is used to point out some events.
Oxymoron: “Magnificent scorn”- used by the speaker to show some irony.
Periphrasis: “Ravager, hemmitdunderhead”- used to stress the individual perception
of the object.
Parallel construction: “I’m tired of waiting”, “I’m tired of thinking”. Syntactical.
Polysyndeton: “"Twelve,"
she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine";
and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.” It
was used to make the sentence more rhythmical.
Repetition: “Old-old, down-down, counting-counting”-used to show the strong
emotions of the speaker.
Summing up the analysis of the story I want to
say that this story helps to believe in kindness, love, friendship. O.Henry
brilliantly uses the twist or surprise ending ( a technique that O. Henry is
famous for ).It was the final realization that the last leaf was not real but a
painting which seemed to have a magical healing power that renewed Johnsy's
will to live and to defeat her pneumonia. Personification, symbolism and
similes catch the reader’s attention and bring to us the main idea.
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