Chapter 7 The Last Leaf | Class 9th Moments Most Important Questions english

The Last Leaf  important Questions Class 9 English

Short Answer Type Questions for The Last Leaf

Answer the following questions in 30-40 words.

Question 1: Who were Sue and Johnsy and how were they living?

Answer

Sue and Johnsy were young struggling artists. They lived together in a small flat. Their flat was situated on the third storey of an old house. Johnsy was suffering from pneumonia and Sue was taking care of her.

Question 2: Why did Johnsy keep looking out of the window?

Answer

Johnsy was suffering with pneumonia. She was advised bed rest. She looked outside the window at an ivy tree whose leaves were falling fast because it was autumn season. She had a strange feeling that she would die when the last leaf fell. So she kept looking out of the window and counting the remaining leaves.

Question 3: How did Sue try to make Johnsy cheerful?

Answer

Sue was more worried due to depression and silence of Jhonsy. She tried to involve her into conversation. She talked about clothes and fashions. She brought her drawing board in Johnsy’s room to paint. She also whistled while painting.

Question 4: What saved Johnsy’s life?

Answer

Behrman saved the life of Johnsy He painted the leaf that sustained itself through the storm of the night. But Behrman got ill and lost his life. As the last leaf did not fall, Johnsy got the willpower to live. It was the master piece of Behrman.

Question 5: Who was Behrman and what was his dream?

Answer

Behrman was an old bearded painter. He lived in the building where flat of Jhonsy and Sue was situated. He wanted to make a master piece in his life. But he could not succeed for the last forty five years. Finally, he painted a leaf that saved a life. It was his master piece. He sacrificed his life for it.

Question 6: Analyse Sue’s character.

Answer

Sue is a loving and caring friend who takes care of Jonhsy. Sue is a young artist and being one of Johnsy’s best friend, tries to support her mentally. Sue sees the positive side of things and convinces Johnsy that thinking about death is a sin. Sue is a symbol of optimism in the story. She is also a symbol of friendship and sacrifice- the two important virtues of life.

Question 7: Why did artists flock to the Greenwich village?

Answer

The houses in Greenwich village had Dutch attics and eighteenth century gables. These offered the ideal setting for budding painters. Apart from this, the rent there was affordable for the painters who were still struggling in their careers.

Question 8: What brought the doctor to the house of Sue and Johnsy?

Answer

Pneumonia had struck Greenwich village. Johnsy was down with the disease. Her frail body was unable to cope with the severity of the attack. She lay in her bed miserable, forlorn and delirious. Her condition was deteriorating fast. Alarmed at her friend’s plight, Sue had asked the doctor to come and examine Johnsy.

Question 9: How did Sue react to the doctor’s advice?

Answer

Clearly, the doctor’s grim warning about Johnsy’s slim chances of survival unsettled Sue. She was in a quandary thinking about the way she could make Johnsy have a desire to recover. Being a pragmatic and tenacious person, she was determined to pull her dear friend out of the abyss of despair. She held back her anguish and began to think positive.

Question 10: What was bothering Johnsy as she lay sick in her bed?

Answer

Pneumonia had ravaged Johnsy’s body and mind. The acute suffering robbed her of all desire to patiently come out of the crisis. She convinced herself that the time to depart had indeed come. She became obsessed with an old vine creeper that was shedding leaves one by one due to seasonal reasons. Quite illogically, she linked the dwindling number of vine leaves to her remaining life span. She concluded that the fall of the last leaf would herald the arrival of her death. Thus, she waited, quite foolishly, for the last leaf to fall.

Question 11: How does the doctor feel about the painting?

Answer

Johnsy, the young painter, is very sick with pneumonia. Her friend, Sue, calls for the doctor. When he examines Johnsy, his prognosis isn’t very good. He gives her one in ten chance of making it, and even that depended on her wish to live. He is worried that she doesn’t want to live. However, on his next visit, he sees that she now has the will to live. He must have felt very odd about the painting, not sure how to feel- for, it gave Johnsy the will to live, but took away Behrman’s strength.

Long Answer Type Questions for The Last Leaf

Answer the following questions in 100-150 words.

Question 1: What do you think Behrman symbolizes?

Answer

Behrman symbolizes, both literally and figuratively, the final sacrifice and as such is a validation of the commitment inherent in true friendship. The remaining leaf, the one that sustains Johnsy and changes her outlook towards life and death, is not a leaf on the tree, but the one painted by Behrman on the window. This becomes the old artist’s masterwork. He dies from the pneumonia he develops while painting the leaf outside in a storm. This was his ultimate sacrifice for his friend. This final act of Behrman’s life not only helps Johnsy to recover, it is a life-affirming event for Behrman even as it leads to his death. Although money and the creation of a masterpiece had proved elusive, creating the simple, yet masterfully painted leaf for Johnsy’s salvation, completed his life’s work.

Question 2: What was the doctor’s observation about Johnsy’s health?

Answer

The doctor examined the ailing Johnsy. He was not sanguine about her ability to fight off the virulent pneumonia which had virtually dragged her to the brink. He conveyed this to Sue, but assured her that Johnsy still had 10% chance of survival. He promised to give the best medicine, but regretfully said that the patient’s mental submission to the infection was undermining her body’s capacity to fight back. He advised Sue to do everything possible to inject some hope and willpower back to desolate Johnsy If this happened, the efficacy of the medication would be doubled, he assured. He suggested Sue to explore if Johnsy had any un-fulfilled desire that could be met to make her recover her lost mental strength.

Question 3: Analyse Johnsy’s character.

Answer

Shea is young artist from California. She lives with her friend Sue in a studio apartment in Greenwich village and has long dreamed of visiting Italy to paint the Bay of Naples. She falls seriously ill with pneumonia and becomes convinced that she will die when the last leaf from the vine outside her window falls. The doctor presents Johnsy’s hopelessness and her acceptance of death as the primary obstacle to her recovery, but Johnsy nonetheless cannot shake her fatalistic insistence that she will die when the last leaf falls. Sue’s attempts to cheer her up are unsuccessful, but when Mr. Behrman paints a realistic-looking leaf onto the wall outside Johnsy’s window—tricking Johnsy into believing that one leaf has improbably survived a storm—Johnsy realizes that her attitude has been unacceptable, and she regains her health.

Question 4: What is the doctor’s role in the story?

Answer

The doctor is a busy, old man with “shaggy grey eyebrows” who attends to Johnsy and Behrman. He diagnoses Johnsy with mental as well as physical illness, telling Sue that he cannot help a patient with medicine when she doesn’t want to get better. He is skeptical of the idea that unfulfilled artistic ambitions might be the cause of Johnsy’s depression, asking Sue whether she is depressed over a man. He visits Johnsy again after she has recovered and gives her a good prognosis, but tells Sue that Behrman has died of pneumonia.

Question 5: Analyse the theme of friendship and sacrifice in the story.

Answer

Behrman’s “great masterpiece” is not a typical painting, but a single leaf he has painted onto the tree—a leaf so realistic that both Johnsy and Sue believe it is truly the last leaf on the vine. This masterpiece saves Johnsy’s life by returning her the will to live. Because he went outside in a storm to paint the leaf, Behrman catches pneumonia and dies. This sacrifice is not the only selfless act in the story: although the three protagonists have few possessions to call their own, they survive hardship by loving and caring for one another.

When Johnsy first becomes ill, she turns away from human companionship, which seems to equate social isolation with illness and death. Convinced that she is dying, Johnsy wants to be alone. Without her friendships, Johnsy would have succumbed to her own melancholy and must have had died : it’s Sue’s attention and Behrman’s act of kindness in painting the leaf that restore her to health.