26 pages • 52 minutes read
Mark TwainA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The true nature of the “decaying corpse” in the story—a combination of a box of guns and some ripe cheese—suggests that death is both inevitable and unremarkable, and not something to be sentimental about. Twain is certainly poking fun at sentimental Victorian notions of death in the story, as he does in other works. For instance, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the character of Emmeline Grangerford embodies these notions as she writes maudlin poems based on obituaries and draws pictures with titles such as “Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.” In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the title character and his equally rascally friends—missing and presumed dead—attend their own funeral for the pleasure of hearing themselves praised lavishly.
In “The Invalid’s Story,” the narrator initially feels only depressed by the odor in the train car. He finds “something infinitely saddening” in the way his friend reminds him of death (Paragraph 2). His thoughts about his friend are mournful and decorous. Thompson, too, at first attributes only sorrowful notions toward what he thinks is the body, sitting silently with the narrator and then quoting scripture. As the story goes on, however, the stench in the car overpowers all sentimental feeling.
By Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
A True Story
Mark Twain
Letters from the Earth
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
Roughing It
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Mark Twain
The Mysterious Stranger
Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Mark Twain
The War Prayer
Mark Twain