The Invalid's Story

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.