The Last Leaf by O Henry

O. Henry’s short stories often give analysts little to work with aside from his ever present sentimentality and surprise endings. While O. Henry was a prolific writer he was often criticized for writing what the public wanted to read instead of delving deeper into his talents. Many have said that if he had not needed the money as a writer, he would have had the freedom to explore his potential. However, O. Henry’s accomplishments in short story writing made him one of the most popular writers of his day and he has gone down as one of the great American classics. In short stories like, “The Last Leaf,” he writes about everyday people and their struggles. Although critics remarked on more than one occasion that his characters lacked depth and the tragedies that happened to them were trite, stories like “The Last Leaf,” gave people hope in a quickly transforming world where big businesses and technology were taking over artsy New York, and those common people that O. Henry loved so much were on the front lines. It is not difficult to understand why “The Last Leaf,” would renew a persons spirit and succeed in spite of a critics snub. “The Last Leaf,” is a story of passion, hope and personal sacrifice. “The Last Leaf,” is a short, although detailed story that describes New York City in 1907 and some of it’s inhabitants. From O. Henry’s description we find only drab renderings of the city that he apparently loved so much. Sentences such as, “There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away," and “ A persistent, cold rain was falling," give the reader an unwelcoming description of the surroundings in which his two main characters were living. It is also a sign of the times. O. Henry’s writing was drawn from personal experiences, places and people he had met. In this description of 6th Avenue he could very well have been talking about the atmosphere he had once been a part of. While we now think of New York City as a bustling center for the financial world and the hub of American fashion and art, it was only beginning to come into full bloom at the time of O. Henry. People were often very rich or very poor and his fascination with the latter was apparent in nearly every story. A popular saying of the day was there were only 400 people in New York worth knowing. Since there were

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