Hope and Health Theme Analysis

Confined to her bed in the Greenwich Village apartment she shares with Sue, Johnsy (who is suffering from pneumonia) becomes preoccupied with a leaf on a vine outside her window. This leaf comes to symbolize her will to live; when the last leaf falls from the vine, she tells Sue, she will die. Their neighbor Mr. Behrman scoffs at the idea: “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing.” Nevertheless, by painting the illusion of a “last leaf” on the wall outside Johnsy’s window, he gives her hope again—a gift which saves Johnsy’s life by reminding her that she still has a future.

The illusion of a leaf is able to keep Johnsy alive because “The Last Leaf” conflates physical and psychological illness. Though the doctor diagnoses Johnsy with pneumonia, he asserts that her real problem is that she’s lost the desire to live. He tells Sue that half of his medical work is useless if the patient herself doesn’t want to get better, and Johnsy seems to no longer hope to regain her health or imagine a future for herself. Because of this, he urges Sue to give Johnsy hope by asking her about new winter clothes, since “if she were interested in the future, her chances would be better.” Johnsy, though, insists that she is finished living and wants “to go sailing down, down, like one of those poor tired leaves,” which shows the extent of her psychological ailment.

When Johnsy sees that the last leaf has seemingly survived the storm against all odds, however, she regains her sense of hopefulness about the future. “I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie,” Johnsy says. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was…it is a sin to want to die.” Having come to the conclusion that she was wrong to lose hope, Johnsy sits up and begins to eat again, and the doctor pronounces her on the mend. Johnsy’s recovery is inextricable from her rediscovery of her hope for her future. It’s not winter clothes that excite her, as the doctor suggested, but the prospect of painting again: she tells Sue that she’d like to achieve her long-held dream of visiting Italy to paint the Bay of Naples.

Just as thoughts of her future paintings give Johnsy the hope to overcome her sickness, Behrman finds courage and hope for himself and his neighbors in the art he will someday create. “Some day I vill baint my masterpiece,” he says,” and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes.” It’s Behrman’s masterpiece—the illusionistic painting of the last leaf outside Johnsy’s window—that gives Johnsy hope. In a way, then, Behrman uses his art to transfer his own hope to Johnsy. Once Behrman has painted his masterpiece, thereby achieving his life’s work, he himself succumbs to pneumonia. This suggests that he, unlike Johnsy, no longer believes his best work is in front of him. Since he has just painted his masterpiece—which reminded Johnsy of her desire to paint her own masterpiece—he no longer has the will to live.

O. Henry therefore suggests that physical health is strongly related to hope for the future. For the artists in “The Last Leaf,” their hope for the future centers on fulfilling their life’s purpose: painting a masterpiece. As the doctor suggests, though, hope can come from many sources—all that matters for restoring physical health is that a person looks forward to something.