Despite the title, Mark Twain’s “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” is not a mystery story. It is a lighthearted criticism of the government, class structures, and struggles of the working class. Twain shows how it is not hard work that makes a man rich, but cunning and deception.
	The story begins with a description of the setting. The narrator immediately mentions his distaste for the upper class’s way of life, with their “human pow-wow and fuss and feathers and display.” The narrator’s retirement spot, Mentone, has all the advantages of the richer places, but is also “quiet, simple, restful, unpretentious; the rich and gaudy do not come here.” Grouping the upper class with frivolities and suggesting that Mentone is better for lacking rich inhabitants already shows immense class division.
	 The narrator proceeds to chat with his friend, Smith, who brings up an anecdote about a child and a caged bird. The child forgets about the bird, and only remembers to feed it when it’s already dead.  The child makes a big deal out of burying it, and Smith finishes the tale by saying “It isn’t children only who starve poets to death and then spend enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made them easy and comfortable.” Although the upper class enjoys the hard work of the lower classes, they will spend money on the aforementioned frivolities instead of giving the lower classes their fair share. The upper class has everything necessary to feed the lower classes and keep them alive, but by themselves they will neglect to.
	Now the meat of the story begins. Smith tells his second story, of his own life and of 3 others who all had a passion for painting. Again, income plays a role; “We were as happy as we were poor, or as poor as we were happy – phrase it to suit yourself.” Twain is implying to do what makes you happy will also make you poor, as hard work is the only way to live in the lower classes. Despite this cheeriness, none will pay for their work or even save them from starving, except the fourth painter, someone just as poor as they are.  If one of them was dead, that one’s paintings would have sold for enough to make all of them rich, but they were all alive and so no one in the upper class would support them, the only help they received was from someone in their own class.
	After a time of picking off scraps and running up their bills, the people of the town they stayed in refused to give them any more credit until their debts were paid in full. All of the storeowners had the money to spare. All of the villagers could have bought the boys’ paintings and by the end of the story would have been much better off for doing so. Put in this trying situation, one of the boys, Carl, realizes the paintings are worth much more than their current value, if only the situation was different. If one of the boys’ name was popularized, and he was dead, the paintings would sell at over 100 times their current value. The paintings are just as good as any other painting in Europe, they just didn’t have an illustrious name attached to them. The point made here is that one man’s hard work is equal to another’s, the people of one class are equal to the people of every other class.
	In explaining his plan to fake one of the boy’s death and then sell the paintings to get rich, Carl says “I base this opinion upon certain multitudinous and long-established facts in human history.”
	The rest of the story tells how the plan worked, the paintings sold, and the four boys lived happily ever after.