The Night the Bed Fell

The story's narrator carefully outlines the placement of the rooms, stating: The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred....

One such line in the story is the following: The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother, in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized: the big...

Old Aunt Clarissa Beall was born on South High Street and married on South High Street—and because of that, she has had a nagging premonition that she will one day die on South High Street. For...

The basic plot of the short story "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber is actually very simple. The father wants some time alone to think, and so he goes to sleep on an old bed in the attic....

The absurdity of the quirks the narrator's family members possess help to create the humor in Thurber's story. The nightly rituals his two aunts and cousin perform to guard themselves against...

A simile is a literary device in which a comparison is made between two seemingly different things. This comparison is illustrated through the use of the words like or as. This is not to be...

In the short story "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber, the author sets up the zany action at the end by describing the various eccentricities of the family members involved. Thurber...

In James Thurber’s story, the narrator presents an apparent jumble of details that were part of the events on that remarkable night. He claims that the night was “the high-water mark” of his youth,...

The quality many of the characters in this zany tale share is self-absorption, a tendency to see life solely from their own point of view. In the story, the action takes off when the narrator's...

In “The Night the Bed Fell,” the narrator’s first cousin, Briggs Beall, visits and sleeps in the narrator’s room. Briggs Beall fears that he will suffocate because He was likely to cease breathing...

Thurber's stories are characteristically infused with a dark comic tone. He rejected the term "humorist," which he called a "loose-fitting and ugly word." He said of writers such as himself that to...

Old Aunt Clarissa Beall can not only whistle like a man, with two fingers in her mouth, but also subscribes to the firm conviction that she is destined to die on South High Street. Her rationale...

James Thurber's humorous short story "The Night the Bed Fell" is filled with strange, quirky characters, including the narrator's first cousin, Briggs Beall. Briggs has a nervous personality and is...

This story puts forward many confusing scenarios, all of which are humorous in their own way. These interrelated anecdotes serve to provide a very interesting and confusing evening in James...

The story published as "The Night the Bed Fell" in the New Yorker is, in fact, the first chapter of author James Thurber's memoir, My Life and Hard Times, published that same year (1933). Dorothy...

The comedic short story "The Night the Bed Fell" by James Thurber relates a series of wild events that take place one night in the home of the narrator and his family. The narrator himself says in...