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.

• Old Behrman, a curmudgeon who lives below Johnsy and Sue, is very upset when Sue comes to ask him to pose because she informs him that Johnsy is giving up her fight to overcome pneumonia. Behrman becomes so angry that Johnsy is counting the ivy leaves that he tells Sue,

"Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs day drop off from a confounded vine?"

• Further, Behrman refuses to model for Sue—"No I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead"—and he scolds Sue for letting Johnsy despair, "Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her?"
• Another external conflict that Mr. Behrman experiences involves his struggle to paint the ivy on the wall opposite Johnsy's window in order to make her think that the last leaf has not fallen, a leaf that can perhaps restore Johnsy's spirit.

Internal conflicts: These are struggles within a character.

• Johnsy wants to die when the last leaf falls; she does not feel that she can overcome pneumonia, but she tells Sue that if the last leaf hangs on, she, too, will persevere.
• Sue is worried about her friend Johnsy, who wants to die when the last leaf falls outside her window.
• Mr. Behrman is very upset that Johnsy wants to give up on life. He struggles to think of a way to save her.
• Behrman also struggles to fight the winter storm as he paints.

The main conflict in the story is less of a conflict between characters, and more the suspense created through Johnsy's declaration that as soon as the last leaf falls off of the vine, she too will fall away, fade, and die.  She states ominously, "When the last one falls I must go, too."  So, the main conflict is the tension created as we wait, and wait, and wait to see what that leaf is going to do.  Other minor conflicts occur as we first find out that Johnsy is sick, and as she continues to get worse.  Sue insists that she will get better, and Johnsy is more morbid in her opinion of the matter, so there is conflict between the two on that issue.  When Behrmen enters the scene, there is a bit of conflict as he, after Sue tells him of Johny's declaration, expresses his disdain for the silly fancies of women.

I have included a link below to the story itself; I recommend reading it if you haven't already.  It is short and entertaining.  Good luck!

In O. Henry's short story “The Last Leaf,” the three main characters—Sue, Johnsy, and Behrman—are similar in that each has goals; they are different, however, in how they pursue their goals. All three characters are starving artists living in 1900s Greenwich Village during a pneumonia epidemic. Sue and Johnsy are young painters early in their careers; Behrman, on the other hand, is a grizzled old man who has painted without much success for forty years.

Before catching pneumonia, Johnsy has a long-term goal to “go to Italy and paint a picture of the Bay of Naples.” The doctor tells Sue that Johnsy has a chance to recover if she has a desire to live. When Sue reveals Johnsy’s goal, the doctor scoffs and pushes it off as nonsense. He assumes that sexist and materialistic goals, like “a man” or “new winter clothes,” are more appropriate to motivate Johnsy to live.

Now, however, Johnsy reveals a less ambitious and romantic yet more immediate, narrow, and dark goal: to die when the last leaf falls from an old tree outside their apartment window. She recounts to Sue her observations of the leaves on the tree:

Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It hurt my head to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five now...Leaves. On the tree. When the last one falls, I must go, too.

The way that Johnsy pursues this goal is through passivity. Having given up on recovery and life, she simply waits for the last leaf to fall. Significantly, she ties her death to exterior factors over which she has no control. She allows her fate to be determined by the weather and the leaf’s reaction to rain and wind. She wants “to go sailing down, down, like one of those leaves.”

In contrast, Sue has an immediate goal that she proactively pursues: saving Johnsy. After weeping at the doctor’s prognosis, she dries her tears and puts on a happy face before entering Johnsy’s room. She sings and paints to be near Johnsy. Sue’s cheerful attitude belies her inner torment and sadness. In fact, she tells a white lie to Johnsy that the doctor rates Johnsy’s chances of recovery as good. Then Sue turns to more pressing and tangible steps to reach her goal, telling Johnsy,

Try to eat a little now. And then I’ll go back to work. And then I can sell my picture, and then I can buy something more for you to eat to make you strong.

Sue optimistically lays out a strategy: Johnsy eats, and in the meanwhile, Sue will finish a painting which she assumes she will be able to sell for profits to purchase more food.

Unlike the women, old man Behrman harbors (and has been for decades) a more nebulous goal:

He had always talked of painting a great picture, a masterpiece, but he had never yet started it.

Instead, he constantly defers his goal through distractions, like modeling for others and whiling away time and energy with alcohol.

He got a little money by letting others paint pictures of him. He drank too much. He still talked of his great masterpiece. And he believed that it was his special duty to do everything possible to help Sue and Johnsy.

Is this last goal—helping the women—yet another form of procrastinating and avoiding his personal artistic goal? When Sue tells him about Johnsy’s desire to die when the last leaf falls, Behrman angrily rejects the foolish idea. He agrees to sit for Sue’s painting while reiterating,

Someday I shall paint my masterpiece, and we shall all go away from here.

As vague as it is, his goal is selfless; he does not specify exactly what his masterpiece is, just that it is a means to an end for all of them: escape. Behrman’s final masterpiece is a realistic painting that mimics the last leaf on the tree:

dark green near the branch. But at the edges it was turning yellow with age. There it was hanging from a branch nearly twenty feet above the ground.

Behrman keeps his goal secret (unlike the women who admit their goals to each other) and proactively takes it upon himself to go out and perch on a ladder in the cold, wet winter night to paint. He sacrifices his own life in order to paint this last leaf and thus prevent Johnsy from giving up on her life. She escapes death, Behrman escapes from a drunken life of unfulfilled ambition, and Sue escapes from worry and sadness.

At the end, a revived and hopeful Johnsy renews her goals, telling Sue,

Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how bad I was. It is wrong to want to die. I’ll try to eat now. But first bring me a looking-glass, so that I can see myself. And then I’ll sit up and watch you cook...someday I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.

Sue, Johnsy, and Behrman are alike in being struggling artists, specifically painters, in the Bohemian Greenwich Village district of New York City that attracts them because of its charm and low rents. All three are also kind people.

Sue and Johnsy are young women who appear, from the way they speak English, to have been born in the United States. Mr. Behrman is an older man who has come to the country from Germany. All three are goodhearted people, but Johnsy, because of her pneumonia, has given up on life.

Behrman appears gruff, but unlike the two young women, he has the foresight to use his skills to save Johnsy's life. When he finds out that Johnsy has decided that she will die after the last leaf has fallen from a vine she can see clinging to a wall outside her window, he takes action. He paints a leaf on the vine that is so realistic it fools Johnsy. When it doesn't fall, as, of course, it can't, Johnsy has time to recover from her illness.

A key difference between Sue, Johnsy, and Mr. Behrman is that while they all are compassionate, Mr. Behrman is the only one of them who takes pragmatic action to save another person's life. He paints a masterpiece in his leaf not only because it is so realistic, but because he sacrifices his own life by creating it in the rain—and his sacrifice saves Johnsy.

Sue and Johnsy both share a love of art, food, and fashion. The text specifically mentions this when it says that the two "found their tastes in art, chicory salad, and bishop sleeves so congenial" that they decide to have a joint studio.

However, there are significant differences between the two. For example, Sue is more proactive and optimistic than Johnsy is. When Johnsy gets sick, Sue takes emotional and physical action to restore her health. She brings in her drawing board and whistles to try and lift Johnsy's depression. She tries to get Johnsy to take broth and eat so that she can gain the nutrition and physical strength to overcome her illness. She tries to convince Johnsy that her chances of beating pneumonia are good, saying that the doctor said her chances of survival were ten to one instead of the doctor's real statement that her chance to live was one in ten.

Johnsy is much more pessimistic and reactive. She simply waits to die and convinces herself that when the last leaf falls, her life will end. She refuses to eat the broth that Sue offers her, believing that there is nothing that will restore her health. She tells Sue that she will not need to buy her the port wine that she loves because she feels she will not be alive to enjoy it.

In short, while Sue acts continually to help Johnsy, Johnsy believes with certainty that her pneumonia cannot be overcome. Sue has hope, but Johnsy is hopeless. The differing reactions that the two characters take towards the situation of Johnsy's sickness reveal their true opposing character traits.

All three of O. Henry's characters in "The Last Leaf" live in the quaint Greenwich Village where "the art people soon came prowling."  But, while Sue and Johnsy are young, aspiring artists, old Behrman is an effete artist, who has "always been about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it."  Instead, he subsists on income he earns by posing an artist's model with his impish body and "head of a satyr."  Yet, all of them have their dreams;  Behrman his masterpiece, Johnsy has dreamt of painting the Bay of Naples, and Sue perseveres in her drawing in hopes of recognition.

Certainly, there is a bond among them.  When Johnsy falls ill, Sue does everthing she can to encourage her friend's will to live. She speaks positively to her friend, 

"Dear! dear!...Think of me if you won't think of yourself.  What would I do?"

Behrman is angered that Johnsy would despair so easily, but, of course, he cries; then, his efforts to save her from succumbing to death are heroic.   Indeed, it is the bond among them that saves Johnsy, with Behrman becoming the sacrificial victim of age who preserves youth by finally painting his "masterpiece."

The protagonist and viewpoint character is Sue. She shares a small flat in Greenwich Village with another young woman called Johnsy. Both are aspiring artists and both are having a hard time surviving in the competitive careers they have chosen. Sue's biggest problem when the story opens is caring for Johnsy, who has caught pneumonia and thinks she is dying. The old doctor who visits Johnsy tells Sue:

“She has one chance in—let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. “And that chance is for her to want to live."

The only other character besides the two girls and the doctor is a temperamental old German named Behrman who talks in a heavy German dialect. He was once an aspiring painter but has lost hope and spends his time drinking gin. He earns a little money modeling for other artists, including Sue. She engages him to pose as an old miner for a series of sketches she is doing to illustrate a magazine story set in the West. He has to pose upstairs in the girls' flat where the light is better. Behrman has taken a paternal interest in these struggling young women and is terribly concerned about Johnsy.

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. 

Johnsy adds to Sue's problems by believing that she is dying and obviously not caring. She keeps looking apathetically out their bedroom window at the old ivy vines growing up the side of a neighboring brick building. As the leaves keep dying off and falling in the cold winter wind, Johnsy imagines that she will die when the last leaf falls.

“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?”

“Dear, dear!” said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, “think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?”

Susie's future is tied to Johnsy's. If Johnsy dies, Sue will probably give up the struggle and go back home to Maine, where opportunities for artists are nil. She would lose the companionship of her friend and would have no one to share the rent.  So her need for Johnsy's recovery is practical as well as emotional.

But miraculously one of the leaves refuses to fall in spite of the wind and rain. Inspired by the resiliency of that brave leaf, Johnsy makes up her mind to recover from her pneumonia.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground.

With Johnsy on her way to complete recovery, Sue confides to her that the leaf is not real. It was painted there in the middle of the stormy night by Old Behrman. And he died of pneumonia resulting from his exposure to the cold. But he had succeeded in creating the masterpiece he had been talking about painting for so many years, and he has also, through his artistry, transmitted some of his stubborn Germanic courage to the sick girl for whom he was willing to sacrifice his life.

In his short story "The Last Leaf" O. Henry exploits the romantic belief in the inherent goodness, unselfishness, and dignity of people. Also typical of his narratives is the oral voice of the raconteur who is somewhat melodramatic. 

As are many of O. Henry's stories, this one is set in New York, specifically in Greenwich Village, where the artistically-inclined migrate. Living in the atelier of a three-story brick apartment building, Sue, who is from Maine, and Joanna (Johnny), who comes from California, are two aspiring painters. In a "dimly-lit den" below them lives "Old Behrman," a little curmudgeon.

The plot revolves around the condition of the Californian who, unaccustomed to cold winters, contracts pneumonia, personified as "Mr. Pneumonia," so it may be considered as a character. There is also an appearance of an unnamed doctor, who comes to treat Johnsy, telling her friend Sue that depression is setting into Johnsy; therefore, Sue needs to promote something as a reason for the girl to live, who cares deeply for Johnsy, railing against "...that dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her" as he says in his Yiddish accent. Later, miraculously, the leaf does not fall, so Johnsy decides that she will, indeed, live for it "is a sin" to wish to die. As it turns out, the leaf was painted during a storm by little Behrman, whom "Mr. Pneumonia" has claimed in Johnsy's place. 

"Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well.... Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice--a man, for instance?"

When Sue responds that Johnsy has no boyfriend, the doctor urges her to think of something to hold her mind that will better her chances to get well. But, there is nothing. So, when she learns that Johnsy has counted the leaves on a branch outside her window that have fallen, marking her own death with theirs, she desperately seeks help from Behrman.