The story is a memoir written in the first person-james thurber. It has a subjective angle, and is ordered chronologically. There are seven main characters, including James (the narrator) and several other family members such as his mother, father, two brothers, cousin, uncle, three aunts, and his grandfather.
The plot for "The Night The Bed Fell" starts with James Thurber's explaining his "interesting" family, including a crazy cousin that thinks he will die of suffocation during his sleep, and a grandfather that leaves the house for several days, coming back talking about a war that happened decades ago. When James falls out of his army cot and his mom mistakes the crash for his father's death, the story starts to get chaotic. "The Night the Bed Fell" was copyrighted in 1999. James Thurber, the author, is blind in one eye from getting hit with an arrow by his brother, William, while they were playing William Tell. The Night the Bed Fell