I was reading a short little story by Mark Twain called “The Danger of Lying in Bed”. The title was a bit bizarre but it caught my interest. The story starts off with a man asking the Twain if he has accident insurance before he gets on a train. Twain responds:
"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. "No, Ibelieve not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. However, tomorrow I don't travel. Give me one for tomorrow."
The man looked puzzled. He said: "But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travelby rail--"
“If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it. Lying at homein bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of."
He then goes on and compares the deaths that happen in a train and the deaths that happen in beds (every day, lots of old people/sick people die in there bed). He gets very specific like in A Modest Proposal with his statistics and mentions a variety of largly populated cities to add more numbers. This is why he advices people to carry these insurance papers to bed with them. He then ends with telling the reader that the marvel that train kills only a small amount of people rather than the huge amount of people who die in there bed.
I don’t know if Twain was trying to make a small joke out of this piece of rather that he was trying to get appoint the message that we can die anywhere at anytime, regardless of the situation. I can hint a lot of sarcasm in this piece, but it really is hard to tell if he’s just joking or making a point but I guess it can be actually both. Not a bad piece, I really did find it funny but it dragged when he was giving statistics of populations in cities. Maybe he did it on purpose though, either way, I got a laugh.
"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. "No, Ibelieve not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. However, tomorrow I don't travel. Give me one for tomorrow."
The man looked puzzled. He said: "But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travelby rail--"
“If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it. Lying at homein bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of."
He then goes on and compares the deaths that happen in a train and the deaths that happen in beds (every day, lots of old people/sick people die in there bed). He gets very specific like in A Modest Proposal with his statistics and mentions a variety of largly populated cities to add more numbers. This is why he advices people to carry these insurance papers to bed with them. He then ends with telling the reader that the marvel that train kills only a small amount of people rather than the huge amount of people who die in there bed.
I don’t know if Twain was trying to make a small joke out of this piece of rather that he was trying to get appoint the message that we can die anywhere at anytime, regardless of the situation. I can hint a lot of sarcasm in this piece, but it really is hard to tell if he’s just joking or making a point but I guess it can be actually both. Not a bad piece, I really did find it funny but it dragged when he was giving statistics of populations in cities. Maybe he did it on purpose though, either way, I got a laugh.
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