Humor & Life Quote by James Thurber

Thurber takes a bodily nuisance - five-hour sneezing fits at an hour associated with Protestant virtue and hustle culture avant la lettre - and turns it into a metaphysical complaint. The setup is classic deadpan: a man earnestly troubleshooting an “allergy,” as if the problem can be solved with labels, tests, and discipline. Then the pivot lands like a perfectly timed pratfall: it’s not pollen or dust, it’s “consciousness.” The joke works because it’s both absurd and instantly recognizable. He’s naming that particular early-morning dread when the mind powers on before the rest of you has agreed to exist.

The subtext is Thurber’s lifelong specialty: making modern life feel like an overcomplicated machine that keeps whirring even when the operator is begging for an off switch. “Allergy to consciousness” is a sly reversal of self-help optimism. It refuses the moral framing that waking early is inherently noble; instead, being awake is treated as a pathological exposure. There’s cynicism here, but it’s gentle, not nihilistic: the target isn’t life itself so much as the relentless, involuntary awareness that accompanies it.

Context matters. Thurber wrote through the age of anxious middle-class refinement, office routines, and a growing faith in medical and psychological expertise. He borrows the language of diagnosis to parody it, suggesting that what ails us isn’t always treatable because it’s baked into the human condition: to be conscious is to be irritated, alert, and, occasionally, sneezing at the mere fact of being alive.