As Walter Babst mentioned in his tweets that, the education system is changing and as we are progressing further towards technological advancement, we are looking at an age of indifference, selfishness and hatred. Crimes, rapes and murders are skyrocketing simply because we are failing to teach our kids learn about the basic humane qualities like love, care, compassion, selflessness etc.
The education system should be more responsible in adapting these formats and so we can teach our kids about these kids as a natural behavioural process. Last year the board of education took out O. Henry’s master piece The Last Leaf out of the syllabus and this asks the more pertinent question, do we really want our kids we be manifested into robots and mindless cogs of a machine?
The stories the last leaves teach us about the sacrifice and selflessness and the concept of a masterpiece. The story opens in country side plot where two independent women, who are artists, are trying to make an honest living by themselves. Sue and Johnsy share an apartment together and below that floor there lives an old man named Behrman whose lie has been a big failure.
Trough out his life he has dreamed about painting a masterpiece but his dream never came true and he still haven’t started it. In one cold evening Sue gets sick and somehow she develops an obnoxious idea that the ivy tree outside of her bedroom’s window has same amount of leaves as her living days. She refuses to visit any doctor and tells Johnsy that as when the last leaf will fall from that tree, so will she. Johnsy tries a lot to change her mind but she simply cannot make her to shake off that idea from her head. In a way she had already determined that her fate was sealed.
The masterpiece
Johnsy asks for help from Behrman and he promises that he will do something about it. The doctor visits Sue and tells Johnsy that she has lost her fighting spirit and unless she herself wants to cure her, the medicine cannot perform any miracle. That night there was a terrible storm and the next morning Sue wanted Johnsy to open the window and get an update of that ivy leaf. In spite of her unwillingness Johnsy was almost forced to open that window and to her surprise she finds one leaf to be hanging out from that ivy and this changed Sue completely.
She realises that is a tiny leaf can put up such a huge struggle against that giant storm then she as a human being can certainly do better. Sue eventually does better and after a few days Johnsy gets a call from the hospital. A single tear rolled down from her eyes as she disclosed to Sue about the terrible fate of Mr. Behrman. During the stormy night Behrman climbed up the wall with a ladder and painted that last leaf on the wall. A leaf that gave life back to Sue, and a gift to her as his masterpiece!