To be or not to be is not the question when one sits with and finishes O.HENRY'S THE LAST LEAF.Attacked with pneumonia,Jhonsy,the junior artist lost total faith in life.Well it's not awkward from her point of view as it turned to be fatal at that time in America.With her friend Sue and her belief that when all the leaves of the ivy vine will fall, she'll bid farewell to this world and her dream to carry on her life as an artist even at that hard time.The time is harsher than real life as the period,here,is no Renaissance period and the patronizing spirit of the patron and appreciation of good and true art is not the religion of the age;the artists of the period have to live in exchange of writing signborads and working for advertisments.Our Sue and Jhonsy are not the exceptions.Where the commerce is too strict by the wish of the artist's economy,there the cordant monotony of tension between necessity of health and necessity of soul is the shimmering pain to live with.Jhonsy's pessimism is not just the result of poverty but the lack of spirit that comes from generation to generation,a social inheritence.The ivy vine has just its last leaf left when Jhonsy's decissive attitude towards death gets well rooted.After a heavy shower in such cold time,the next morning is fresh,perhaps fresher than ever with the last leaf still there.The colour is as bright as new and so according to Jhonsy's belief she is not dead,she is alive.A sudden gust of life spirit invades no lesser than a revolution and she gains all her hope back with a commitment that she'll live. But the time is not out of age,and this spirit is gained at a bitter price as old German painter Behrman gets attacked with pneumonia after painting the last leaf,not caring a bit for his own life,drenched in rain he gets his work done with a signature of true German spirit.But it's never too bad always to lose.He deliberately gets out in rain to finish the task,it's not to overpower the prejudice of Jhonsy but to evoke the optimistic sprit,to transmit rather,of his own to the next generation.He actually paves the way for the future painters so that they shouldn't give up the hope and continue to win in the struggle for existence with their talent.Behrman didn't get his due recognition as an artist in spite of having talent,but at the end of his life he makes his greatest achievement by giving back the life where a painted leaf is mistaken for the living one symbolizing the truth that ART IS FOR LIFE'S SAKE.His best piece of art is this last work on the canvas of life.There's at last the completeness in his life,perhaps for this he survived so long.The magnificience is extracted out of the curses that life catered to him.Now, to be or not to be is not the question,actually it wipes away that controversy.Behrman is the real hero,the true artist who creates life,celebrates it and sacrifices the same with art as the companion of his soul.