Loss In Gwilan's Harp, And The Last Leaf

Intertwined in the stories of “Gwilan’s Harp” by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Washwoman” by Isaac Singer, and “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry, lays a burden of loss. All of these stories experience the greatest loss when a character dies. Torm, Gwilan’s faithful husband in “Gwilan’s Harp”, a humble, hardworking washwoman from “The Washwoman”, and Behrman, the unsuccessful artist from “The Last Leaf”, all perish in their stories. The characters that die impact the other characters in the story in different ways even though the loss all the characters experience is death. So, despite the authors writing three unique stories with three different lessons, the loss of a character ties them together.

“Gwilan’s Harp” by LeGuin, follows the story of a young female musician named Gwilan. Gwilan inherits a beautiful harp from her mother that had been passed down for generations and gains a musical reputation from her ability to play it beautifully. However, tragedy strikes in a freak wagon accident as her magnificent harp smashes to pieces and her wrist breaks. She marries a farmer named Torm due to their same love of music. The couple lives in poverty with their two sons, who never learned music. Gwilan plays the harp sometimes, but
Henry, the story takes mostly a depressive mood throughout. Johnsy, a young painter, becomes riddled with pneumonia. She lies in bed and stares at a vine on the brick wall of the building outside her window. Her roommate, Sue, tries to cheer her up but fails. Johnsy accepts that she will die, and says when the last leaf falls off the vine, she will die, yet the leaf never falls. This is because Behrman, an old painter who has never been successful, paints the leaf onto the wall. Johnsy gains hope and overcomes her sickness, but Behrman pays the price as he catches pneumonia from painting out in the freezing rain. “Behrman his name is – some kind of artist I believe. Pneumonia, too” (Henry). Behrman dies to save