The Invalid's Story

Personification occurs when an object or idea is given human- or animal-like characteristics. It often ascribes emotions to elements from nature, such as wind or rain, and amplifies the mood or tension in a work of fiction. In “The Invalid’s Story,” the snowstorm that rages outside the train car mirrors the frenetic events inside the car, adding to the chaotic mood; it also amplifies the tension, as the poor weather means that the characters are constantly ricocheting from one bad situation inside the train car to an equally bad one outside. Mark Twain underscores the storm’s significance by periodically personifying it. When the narrator travels to the train station, the storm is “whistling” as though happy, but as the journey progresses and the smell worsens, the rain “roar[s]” and the weather becomes “mad”—words that evoke anger and mental illness.

Vernacular is the informal spoken language of a particular region, culture, or group. Authors use this device to add authenticity to their works. In “The Invalid’s Story,” Twain uses vernacular to help readers identify with Thompson’s character and to add humor to the story.

The narrator’s speech and indirect thought is quite proper in contrast to Thompson’s. He says, for instance, that when Thompson builds a fire in the stove of the train car, he “could not but feel that it was a mistake” (Paragraph 2). Thompson, by contrast, has irregular grammar and colorful regional expressions. He uses terms like “considerable overdue” (Paragraph 21) to describe decaying bodies and says he “never did see one of ’em warm up to his work so” (Paragraph 36). Readers can laugh at his efforts, but his sincere, inelegantly expressed admiration for the corpse satirizes notions of sentiment toward the dead while highlighting the difference in social class among the story’s two main characters.

A frame story (also called a frame narrative) places the main action of a story within another story. Usually placed in the introduction and conclusion, it adds context, and, in the case of “The Invalid’s Story,” it adds drama to the nested story.

Twain’s frame story presents the 41-year-old narrator as someone who has lost his health two years before in a strange way. He says the story is “the actual truth,” adding the appearance of reality to the tale. To create dramatic irony, he interrupts the narrative at points from the perspective of his older self. This occurs when he reveals that the box in the train car actually carries guns and when he says “[he] know[s] now” that the package creating the bad odor in the car contained Limburger cheese (Paragraph 2). The frame story concludes with the narrator’s revelation that his health has been destroyed and he is on his way home to die, supporting the theme of The Nature of Mortality. If exposure to odiferous cheese can kill a man, then death can be a very random event.