Attempt an estimate of the characters of two painters friends Sue and Johnsy. Add a brief comparative assessment,Sketch the character of Sue. Sketch the character of Johnsy.

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Sketch the character of Sue./Sketch the character of  Johnsy.

Q.Attempt an estimate of the characters of two painters friends Sue and Johnsy. Add a brief comparative assessment.

In the pivotal position of O Henry's story The Last Leaf stand two young women, Sue and Johnsy. They are friends and painters. They are ambitious but hard pressed, struggling but aspirant for success in their profession. In the short story The Last Leaf, they have no long space. Yet, their characters are well sketched, and never look sketchy.

Sue and Johnsy were close in friendship, though they belonged to different places. Sue was from Maine, while the other, a Californian. They had a sudden meeting in a hotel. They got acquainted there, found their tastes and temperaments similar and planned to work together. They settled in the painters' colony, took an apartment on a low rent and started a studio together.

(a) Sue :  Of the friends, Sue seems more prominent. She is given too, a greater space in the theme of the story. She is drawn by the story-teller with human feelings and rational sensibility.

Sue was all affectionate and attentive to her friend Johnsy. When the latter was smitten with a fierce attack of pneumonia, she took utmost care to bring her round. She had the consultation with the doctor with all earnestness. She was much worried to learn the doctor's opinion about the faint chance of her friend's recovery because of her morbidity and sadistic approach to life.

Sue's concern for her friend is more evident when the latter was found haunted with a strange premonition that she would die with the fall of the last leaf of the vine tree, existing just outside the window of her chamber. She spared nothing to dissuade her from entertaining such a gloomy thought. She argued with her, appealed to her and even threatened to keep the window close. But nothing could budge her friend's obstinate faith in her death, with the fall of the last leaf.

When the last leaf, thanks to the miracle of old Behrman's art, did not fall and Johnsy realized that it was a sin to seek death. Sue was all happy and gay. She was ready to serve her with nutricious food and drink and make her perfectly hale and hearty to venture to paint the Bay of Naples. She was rightly commended and complimented by the doctor, although the secret of Johnsy's recovery lay in Behrman's masterpiece.

Sue, unlike her friend, was a practical and lively young woman. She was, hard working and knew her job well. The way she tackled the eccentric old painter Behrman to sit as her model marked her practical promptitude. It was she who brought to her rejuvenated friend the news of Behrman's masterly painting of the last leaf that had revived her and of his sad death of pneumonia in the hospital.

(b) Johnsy: Johnsy was Sue's companion and partner in the studio. But all through the stroy, she is present in a state of ailment. She is shown laid down with an acute attack of pneumonia. The author has represented her as a little, blood-thinned woman. The implication is of her little body and weak health.

But this is not all of Johnsy. What is marked conspicuously in her portrait is a delicately sensitive temper. Probably out of her illness and weakness, morbidity and melancholy preyed upon her sensitive mind. She was haunted with the thought of death, and that was intensified by her sight from her bed of the fall of the leaves of an old vine tree, standing on an old brick wall outside. Her mind was strangely obsessed with a sense that she, too, would die with the fall of the last leaf. In fact, she seemed to have no interest in life or in the ties that sweetened life and made it worth living. The story writer has finely presented that very awkward, aching sense in her. "The fancy seemed to possess her more strangly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed." Naturally, the doctor, treating her, got disgusted and predicted that her chance of recovery was very meagre, 'only one in ten'.

But her desire to live revived. She realized that it is a sin to want to die.' She wanted to have food and drink. Even her hope for painting the Bay of Naples returned. Her recovery started, and the doctor was happy and hopeful and congratulated her friend, Sue.

Of course, the thorough change of her sentimental, pessimistic mood was made possible by the rare painting of old Behrman, an unsuccessful painter, of the last leaf in the place of the real leaf, that had already dropped down. No credit was, however, due to her friend or herself for the drastic change in her mind and the prompt recovery of her health. Yet, she survived to pursue her aim of life, as the old painter passed away.