Part I: Summary + Bibliographic Information
In the story “A Curious Dream” in American Short Stories, Mark Twain describes an unusual dream that he had with the dead skeletons. At beginning of the dream, when he is sitting on the doorstep, he encounters skeletons are leaving their graveyard to find a new location. Then there is one skeleton that sits down next to him and has a friendly conversation with him. The skeleton complains about the treatment that they have received from their descendants. The disregard of the posterity and the growing of the city have made the skeletons decide to leave their old graveyard to find a better one. The skeleton offers him to take its coffin as a gift, but he nicely refuses it. He mentions to a skeleton that he will help them to deliver this message to their descendants by publishing this curious dream in the daily newspaper. After hearing a rooster crow, he looks around all of the skeletons are gone. He wakes up and realizes it is a dream.
Part II: Analysis (What really happens after we die?)
Life after death is always a mystery to the living. First of all, the evidence for the afterlife is unclearly clarified. Scientists have been studying about this phenomenon, but they have not had any positive answers yet. In addition, many different regions have their old assumptions about afterlife. Buddhism believes that there are places called heaven where good people can get rewarded and hell where bad people get their punishment for bad things that they have done in life. In Hinduism, death means the end of a soul’s life and a beginning of a new life cycle. Lastly, there are many special cases where people are found with a special human sense is called sixth sense. These people can have ability to predict the future or talk to the dead soul. For example, the famous Bulgarian psychic Baba Vanga who can predict exactly the date that World War II started. Even though we cannot find the answer for what happen afterlife but scientists have come very close to proving the existence of the soul. The discovery will be an important key to open the secret door where the true about our life, existence will be revealed.
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