What is the conflict in "The Invalid's Story"?
The main conflict in Mark Twain's humorous story is the struggle of the minds of the two men--human minds that Twain was known to have believed dangerous objects--to deal with a horrendous odor.
The conflict in Mark Twain's "The Invalid's Story" derives from the efforts of the narrator/protagonist and the expressman, named Thompson, as they attempt to deal with the horrible smell that they are convinced emanates from the coffin of his "poor departed friend," John B. Hackett, whom the narrator is transporting by express train two hundred miles to his parents' home in Wisconsin. The men try a few different things that fail because they do not realize that it is Limburger cheese that is the cause:
- They break the glass of one of the windows and go to the open window to inhale fresh air periodically.
- When the cold winter air then enters, the...
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- men decide to build a fire, but this causes the Limburger cheese to melt and the odor to become more offensive.
- They smoke cigars to disguise the smell.
- They step outside the car to breath fresh air.
- They push the coffin to the end of the express car, but it does not help.
- They use carbolic acid to mask the smell; however, it just creates another offensive odor.
- Thompson sets a bonfire of chicken feathers, dried apples, sulphur, and other items.
- They conclude that the only thing they can do is spend the rest of the trip out on the platform despite the frigid temperatures. In addition, the narrator admits that they know it may mean their deaths from typhoid fever (they do not die, but do become very ill).
All the men's attempts to solve the problem of the smell become futile because they have not identified what the smell is. Nor do they know what is held in the coffin in the first place: guns. The friend's body in a coffin is in another part of the train. Indeed, their minds have worked against them.
We were taken from the platform an hour later, frozen and insensible, at the next station, and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and never knew anything again for three weeks.
The narrator claims this illness has made an old man of him now.
The humor of Twain's story revolves around this conflict because not only are their efforts somewhat ridiculous, but also the smell is not at all from a decaying body. Twain was known for his belief that the human brain could be a dangerous object.
References
What are the conflicts in "The Invalid's Story"?
Conflict in literature typically refers to a struggle experienced by the main character. In “The Invalid’s Story” by Mark Twain, the surface-level conflict is man vs. self. The narrator in Twain’s tale is struggling with his feelings regarding the death of his friend. He describes his mood as the train leaves the station by stating the following: “a cheerless misery stole over me, my heart went down, down, down.” When he begins to detect the horrible smell, he is depressed and saddened by the thought of his friend’s corpse. Twain further demonstrates the protagonist’s sadness with the line, “there was something infinitely saddening about his calling himself to my remembrance in this dumb pathetic way.” As the narrator makes each attempt to lessen the horrible stench, he is again reminded of his friend’s demise and his own sadness.
“The Invalid’s Story,” on a deeper level, is really about man vs. fate. The narrator realizes that death is inevitable. Although the bulk of the story centers on the narrator’s journey with his friend’s corpse, or at least what he believes to be his corpse, the reality is the corpse is just a reminder that everyone must die. Thompson even goes into a rant about how “we all got to go” when discussing the corpse. Twain ends the story with the narrator stating “he is on his way home to die.”
There are many conflicts, and many types of conflict, in this story (if you
define "conflict" as any sort of clash or disagreement). The first is between
the stories told—how old is the narrator?
The second is a restatement of what the box being transported contains.
The third is a conflict between the smell and comfort, and the fourth is
confusion over the source of that smell (cheese or dead body).
Cigar smoke vs. cheese smell.
All these stresses vs. the narrator's health.
And subject matter (serious) vs. tone (humorous).
The main conflict is that the two men can't stand the smell inside the freight car but can't stand the cold outside either. The narrator states that it is wintertime and that he left his home in Cleveland in a driving snot-storm. The train is taking them to Wisconsin, where the weather is even colder in the winters. They keep trying to do something to cope with the bad smell, but everything they try, such as smoking cigars and even building an open fire on a piece of metal, only makes the smell worse and drives them outside again. They finally resolve the conflict in a drastic way. The expressman tells the narrator:
"We got to stay out here, Cap. We got to do it. They ain't no other way. The Governor [that is, the corpse] wants to travel alone, and he's fixed so he can outvote us."
So they stay outside until they reach the next station. The narrator concludes:
We were taken from the platform an hour later, frozen and insensible, at the next station, and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and never knew anything again for three weeks.
As the title of the story suggests, the narrator has become a permanent invalid as a result of his ordeal. The moral of the story would seem to be: "No good deed goes unpunished."