At last I've finished  my blog. I like such an activety much because it's really interesting to analyse the story, trying to understand the message of the author and to feel the beauty of the piece of art. So here is my stylistic analysis.

The title of the story is “The Last Leaf” written by O’Henry. The title of the story is intriguing and thought-provoking, because it makes to think what are the connections of the title of the novel and the content of it.
 O. Henry was the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, who wrote colorful short stories with surprising and ironic twists. His best-known titles included "The Last of the Troubadours," "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief." O.Henry pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class New Yorkers.
Writing prodigiously under the pen name O. Henry, he completed one story a week for a newspaper, in addition to other stories for magazines. Popular collections of his stories included The Four Million (1906); Heart of the West and The Trimmed Lamp(both 1907); The Gentle Grafter and The Voice of the City (both 1908); Options (1909); and Whirligigs and Strictly Business (both 1910).
 Incapable of integrating a book-length narrative, O. Henry was skilled in plotting short ones. He wrote in a dry, humorous style and, as in "The Gift of the Magi," frequently used coincidences to underline ironies.His short stories were masterworks of careful plotting and surprise endings: in The Ransom of Red Chief, for instance, a kidnapped tyke is so much trouble that the kidnappers end up paying the boy's father to take him back. O. Henry's work appeared in magazines and journals across the country and were collected in such books as Cabbages and Kings (1904), Heart of the West (1907) and The Voice of the City(1908). Even after O. Henry's death on June 5, 1910, stories continued to be collected: Sixes and Sevens(1911); Rolling Stones (1912); Waifs and Strays (1917); O. Henryana (1920); Letters to Lithopolis (1922); Postscripts (1923); and O. Henry Encore (1939).

The story tells us about two young women artists, Sue and Johnsy (familiar for Joanna). They met in May, six months previously, and decided to share a studio apartment. Stalking their artist colony in November is "Mr. Pneumonia." The story begins as Johnsy, near death from pneumonia, lies in bed waiting for the last leaf of an ivy vine on the brick wall she spies through her window to fall.
"I’m tired of thinking," says Johnsy. "I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves". However, an unexpected hero arrives to save Johnsy. It’s not the brusque doctor who gives her only one in ten chances to survive, raising them to one in five if Sue can get her to hope for something important like a man, not her true desire to "paint the Bay of Naples some day" .
Mr. Behrman, an old man who lives in the apartment below Sue and Johnsy, who enjoys drinking, works sometimes as an artist’s model, and as yet has made no progress over the past 40 years on painting his own masterpiece, becomes in typical O. Henry fashion the hero. The evidence of his heroics are found the day before he dies from pneumonia: outside Johnsy’s window are a ladder, a lantern still lighted "some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it . . . it’s Behrman’s masterpiece--he painted it (a leaf) there the night that the last leaf fell", Sue informs Johnsy.
The basic theme is the real feelings of love and self-sacrifise, about the healing power of art, which can give life and resurrect.
The events in the analysed text happen in Greenwich Village in a joint studio of two artists: Sue and Johnsy. The setting of the events in the story is realistic, it it presented in a general way. The setting of the story privides a background for action, reflects the character and embodies the theme. Ivy is one of the elements of the setting and plays a great role in understanding the story itself as it symbolises immortality, eternal life and Mr.Behrman gave Johnsy a flash of hope by sacrificing his own life and becoming immortal in his masterpiece.


From the point of view of presentation, the story is the third person narrative with the elements of a dialogue.

There are five characters in 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 and  Mr. Behrman are protagonists and Mr. Pneumonia - antagonist.
Sue is shown as a young girl who is ill.She think that she will die. She is shown very kind and good person. Here the author uses indirect characterization of the character, he shows only their deeds. For example, Sue always takes care about Johnsy. The author is sympathetic towards her.  Mr.Bergman is depicted inderectly: through his appearance, lifestyle and deads : "Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above."

    With the help of the narrative description of what Mr. Pheumonia is doing, we can guess the author’s attitude towards him. O.Henry personified this disease 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: the esposition (from the words "in a little district" till the words "the joint studio resulted"), the story itself (from the words "that was in May" till the words "around her, pillows and all" till the words "through an icy cold"), the climax (from the words "They couldn't imagine" till the words "ivy leaf on the wall"), the denouement (from the words "didn't you wonder" till the words "the last leaf fell").

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 Berhman 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.

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.

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.
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.

Now let's analyse the characters of the story. There are five of them:

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 and  Mr. Behrman are protagonists and Mr. Pneumonia - antagonist.

Sue is shown as a young girl who is ill.She think that she will die. She is shown very kind and good person. Here the author uses indirect characterization of the character, he shows only their deeds. For example, Sue always takes care about Johnsy. The author is sympathetic towards her.  Mr.Bergman is depicted inderectly: through his appearance, lifestyle and deads : "Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above."

    With the help of the narrative description of what Mr. Pheumonia is doing, we can guess the author’s attitude towards him. O.Henry personified this disease 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»

Let's precede to the plot of the story.

First of all, from the point of view of presentation, the story is the third person narrative with the elements of a dialogue.

Secondly,the story has a closed plot structure and it runs as follows: the esposition (from the words "in a little district" till the words "the joint studio resulted"), the story itself (from the words "that was in May" till the words "around her, pillows and all" till the words "through an icy cold"), the climax (from the words "They couldn't imagine" till the words "ivy leaf on the wall"), the denouement (from the words "didn't you wonder" till the words "the last leaf fell").

As for the story itself, it tells us about two young women artists, Sue and Johnsy (familiar for Joanna). They met in May, six months previously, and decided to share a studio apartment. Stalking their artist colony in November is "Mr. Pneumonia." The story begins as Johnsy, near death from pneumonia, lies in bed waiting for the last leaf of an ivy vine on the brick wall she spies through her window to fall.

"I’m tired of thinking," says Johnsy. "I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves". However, an unexpected hero arrives to save Johnsy. It’s not the brusque doctor who gives her only one in ten chances to survive, raising them to one in five if Sue can get her to hope for something important like a man, not her true desire to "paint the Bay of Naples some day" .

Mr. Behrman, an old man who lives in the apartment below Sue and Johnsy, who enjoys drinking, works sometimes as an artist’s model, and as yet has made no progress over the past 40 years on painting his own masterpiece, becomes in typical O. Henry fashion the hero. The evidence of his heroics are found the day before he dies from pneumonia: outside Johnsy’s window are a ladder, a lantern still lighted "some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it . . . it’s Behrman’s masterpiece--he painted it (a leaf) there the night that the last leaf fell", Sue informs Johnsy.

And now let's analyse the setting of the story. The events in the analysed text happen in Greenwich Village in a joint studio of two artists: Sue and Johnsy. The setting of the events in the story is realistic, it it presented in a general way. The setting of the story privides a background for action, reflects the character and embodies the theme. Ivy is one of the elements of the setting and plays a great role in understanding the story itself as it symbolises immortality, eternal life and Mr.Behrman gave Johnsy a flash of hope by sacrificing his own life and becoming immortal in his masterpiece.

I got to know about the writer of the story. So O. Henry was the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, who wrote colorful short stories with surprising and ironic twists. His best-known titles included "The Last of the Troubadours," "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief." O.Henry pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class New Yorkers.

Porter attended school for a short time, then clerked in an uncle's drugstore. At the age of 20 William Sydney Porter went to Texas, working first on a ranch and later as a bank teller. In 1887 he married and began to write freelance sketches. A few years later he founded a humorous weekly, the Rolling Stone. When this failed, he became a reporter and columnist on the Houston Post.

Indicted in 1896 for embezzling bank funds (actually a result of technical mismanagement), Porter fled to a reporting job in New Orleans, then to Honduras. When news of his wife's serious illness reached him, he returned to Texas. After her death William Sydney Porter was imprisoned in Columbus, Ohio. During his three-year incarceration, he wrote adventure stories set in Texas and Central America that quickly became popular and were collected inCabbages and Kings (1904).

Released from prison in 1902, Porter went to New York City, his home and the setting of most of his fiction for the remainder of his life. Writing prodigiously under the pen name O. Henry, he completed one story a week for a newspaper, in addition to other stories for magazines. Popular collections of his stories included The Four Million (1906); Heart of the West and The Trimmed Lamp(both 1907); The Gentle Grafter and The Voice of the City (both 1908); Options (1909); and Whirligigs and Strictly Business (both 1910).

O. Henry's most representative collection was probably The Four Million. The title and the stories answered the snobbish claim of socialite Ward McAllister that only 400 people in New York "were really worth noticing" by detailing events in the lives of everyday Manhattanites. In his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi," a poverty-stricken New York couple secretly sell valued possessions to buy one another Christmas gifts. Ironically, the wife sells her hair so that she can buy her husband a watch chain, while he sells his watch so that he can buy her a pair of combs.

Incapable of integrating a book-length narrative, O. Henry was skilled in plotting short ones. He wrote in a dry, humorous style and, as in "The Gift of the Magi," frequently used coincidences to underline ironies.His short stories were masterworks of careful plotting and surprise endings: in The Ransom of Red Chief, for instance, a kidnapped tyke is so much trouble that the kidnappers end up paying the boy's father to take him back. O. Henry's work appeared in magazines and journals across the country and were collected in such books as Cabbages and Kings (1904), Heart of the West (1907) and The Voice of the City(1908). Even after O. Henry's death on June 5, 1910, stories continued to be collected: Sixes and Sevens(1911); Rolling Stones (1912); Waifs and Strays (1917); O. Henryana (1920); Letters to Lithopolis (1922); Postscripts (1923); and O. Henry Encore (1939).   No stranger to alcohol and plagued by ill health, he died broke at the age of 47.

I've read the chosen story for the second time and I found it unusual and fascinating. Actually, my expectations were right, the story really concerns the last moments of life of one of the characters, but the resolutin of the story happened to be optimistic (if I could say so). I like the way O.Henry keeps the intrigue by not telling everything to the reader till the very end of the story. 

For the final project I've chosen the short story "The Last Leaf" by O.Henry. Judjing by the title, I can say that the story can be about the last moments of somebody's life. Hope, I'll enjoy this story.

Actually, it was not so hard for me to create a blog, it's rather interesting to use it as a means of education. The way of editing a blog turned to be a little bit difficult, but I hope I'll cope with it. Now we can easily communicate online in one post, estimate and comment upon the work of our group-mates.
I have visited some blogs of my group-mates. I like the design they chosed, photos and pictures which attract   the attention of visitors.