The Night the Bed Fell

Humorous in tone, James Thurber’s short story “The Night the Bed Fell” describes an event that took place in the narrator's home in Columbus, Ohio. The story is the first chapter in the collection My Life and Hard Times (1933), which is considered an autobiographical work exploring the author's eccentric family and the town they lived in.

Thurber tells the story writing from the perspective of himself as a boy, taking a subjective angle on the events that proceed. The story is told chronologically, with a brief introduction describing some of the strange behaviors of the author's family that contribute to the chaotic plot of the brief tale. Thurber reveals that his grandfather, his father's dad, is delusional and often departs for days from the family home, returning to talk about the Civil War as if it were still being waged outside. Thurber's first cousin Briggs, who also lives with the family, believes that he will suffocate in the night for absolutely no reason that Thurber can discern.

This is the backdrop of the story, which begins when Thurber tumbles out of the army cot that he uses for a bed and crashes to the floor in the middle of the night, waking his paranoid mother. Hearing the sound of James hitting the floor, his mother wakes with a start, absolutely certain that the sound she heard was the crash of the headboard in the attic bedroom, which she believes must have crushed her husband to death in his sleep. Positive that her husband is now dead, she begins to scream and shout hysterically, waking Herman, Thurber's brother.



Herman, who knows his mother and her mind well, believes that she has finally lost it. He reassures her that everything is fine and that she is all right, all while she is shouting for someone to save her husband from his entrapment underneath the heavy headboard she believes fell down. Herman wakes up Briggs, Thurber's paranoid first cousin, because he needs help soothing Thurber's mother. Briggs, however, believes that the hullabaloo must be because he stopped breathing in the middle of the night, which he has long suspected would happen. To counteract his certain death, Briggs covers himself in camphor water to revive himself.

Briggs shares a room with Thurber, who didn't wake up when he fell from the cot – instead, he remained bundled in his blankets and protected from the chaos around him by the cot, which had fallen over him creating a kind of canopy. He vaguely wakes when Briggs, dousing himself in camphor spirits, begins to choke and sputter from the spirit getting into his mouth. As the shouting persists, however, the narrator calls out, moaning, about the noise, assuming he must be in some kind of horrible nightmare. Thurber's cries coupled with Brigg's squalling that he is still breathing, only add to the chaos.

Meanwhile, Thurber's mother is racing up the stairs, tugging on the door to the attic bedroom, which appears to be stuck shut. Herman follows his mother, whom he is worried, is losing her mind. The banging on the attic door finally wakes Thurber's father, the deepest sleeper of the family, who believes the house must be on fire. He calls, “I'm coming,” sleepily from his bed, making Thurber's mother believe he is talking to god about departing this world, only making her more frantic.



Finally, Thurber's father exits the attic bedroom unharmed, though confused. Everyone is soothed and informed of the reality of the situation; despite the absurdity of the situation, all Thurber's mother can say is that she is glad that her father-in-law, Thurber's grandfather, is not home to see the excitement.

James Thurber was an American author, cartoonist, journalist, playwright, and humorist known for his comical short stories, memoirs, and other written materials. He worked from 1929 to 1961, when he passed away at his home in New York City. One of his most popular stories is “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which was adapted into a feature-length film. He wrote primarily short stories, though he also worked collaboratively with Elliott Nugent to write the Broadway comedy The Male Animal. For his life's work, he was honored with an annual Thurber prize for humor in American literature, among other honors.