One of many novels and stories of outstanding Mark Twain is called “Is He Living or Is He Dead?

One of many novels and stories of outstanding Mark Twain is called “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” it is one of my favourite short stories of Mark Twain. This story shows us one of the most interesting, smart and inventive bluff of the world. The story is about 4 close friends who knew each other for a long time and who were having their friendship in spite of the circumstances, poverty and wealth. It begins with the description of their life: poor life of students, young artists. They have no money, they have no job, they have many debts, and only they can do is their art- they draw pictures of everything but their pictures have no value and have no interest for people. But one day they decide to have the most interesting thing in their life. They want to write many pictures, make the artist famous and then “kill” him. And they will solve all their problems at once- people will buy all the pictures of the “dead” artist and the four friends will be rich and will never face difficulties in their life.

This story is written with great humour and intelligence, the author helps us to see the strange and awful situation – if you want to be rich and have much money for your work you need just die. You will have everything after your death – you will be famous, you will be rich and people will love you and talk about you. So the plot of the book is very surprising as the situation itself. Mark Twain tells us about justice and injustice, about the society and about the way how easy you can make people change their thoughts and their preferences. All this things are written in such a humorous way that we do not really feel depressed at the same time we understand the whole situation.