A Curious Dream by Mark Twain
A Curious Dream by Mark Twain
The aim of the following paper is to analyze a story by Mark Twain called A Curious Dream. We propose in this paper firstly, to analyze characters, theme and point of view; secondly, the author’s style and thirdly, the author’s beliefs. Firstly, Characters
The main participants in the story are: the author and John Baxter Copmanhurst (the skeleton). The author in the story is the narrator presented with the subject pronoun “I”; he is the one who describes and comments a singular dream he had. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is surprised, horrified and pitying when he is brought face to face with a skeleton but at the end he is interested and filled with sympathy for the dead and gives his promise “to publish and account of this curious and very sorrowful exodus”. The second character John Baxter is a kind, “tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person”. He is a fully developed character who feels upset because his descendants have forgotten him in his grave. He complains that dead suffers profound discomfort while their living family luxuriates with inherited money
Theme
The story “A Curious Dream” by Mark Twain expresses more than one moral lesson; thus, it is difficult to state just one. For us, the story conveys two different morals. On one hand, the first moral deals with the neglect of local cemeteries to invite citizens to make local improvements and take care of the memorial parks. This is shown in the story when the skeleton tells Mark Twain his problem “Look at this shroud-rag. Look at this gravestone, all battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin…”, “My pride is hurt, and my comfort is impaired—destroyed…”. Furthermore, at the end of the story “The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is leveled particularly and
The aim of the following paper is to analyze a story by Mark Twain called A Curious Dream. We propose in this paper firstly, to analyze characters, theme and point of view; secondly, the author’s style and thirdly, the author’s beliefs. Firstly, Characters
The main participants in the story are: the author and John Baxter Copmanhurst (the skeleton). The author in the story is the narrator presented with the subject pronoun “I”; he is the one who describes and comments a singular dream he had. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is surprised, horrified and pitying when he is brought face to face with a skeleton but at the end he is interested and filled with sympathy for the dead and gives his promise “to publish and account of this curious and very sorrowful exodus”. The second character John Baxter is a kind, “tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person”. He is a fully developed character who feels upset because his descendants have forgotten him in his grave. He complains that dead suffers profound discomfort while their living family luxuriates with inherited money
Theme
The story “A Curious Dream” by Mark Twain expresses more than one moral lesson; thus, it is difficult to state just one. For us, the story conveys two different morals. On one hand, the first moral deals with the neglect of local cemeteries to invite citizens to make local improvements and take care of the memorial parks. This is shown in the story when the skeleton tells Mark Twain his problem “Look at this shroud-rag. Look at this gravestone, all battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin…”, “My pride is hurt, and my comfort is impaired—destroyed…”. Furthermore, at the end of the story “The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is leveled particularly and