Analysis: The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calavers County

The narrator, a mannered Easterner, describes his visit to a mining camp where, on behalf of a friend, he is searching for one Leonidas W. Smiley. He stops in an old tavern, where he meets "goodnatured, garrulous" old Simon Wheeler, who cannot recall a Leonidas Smiley, but does remember a Jim Smiley who lived in the camp around 1849 or 1850. Without prompting, Wheeler launches into an extended narrative about the gambler Smiley and his exploits. Smiley, he says, was "uncommon lucky," and had a reputation for

Mark Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a short story with the lesson that what goes around comes around. In this short story, which first appeared in 1856 and his first successful story, Twain uses local customs of the time, dialect, and examples of social status in his story to create a realistic view of the region in which the story takes place. The way that the characters behave is very distinctive. Dialect is also used to give the reader a convincing impression of the setting in "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". The social status of the main characters in this story also was something that

Realism is the period in American literature from 1860 to 1890. This movement in writing focused on writing about how things really appeared and how they really were instead of writing in a dark manner. The stories, Life On The Mississippi and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County written by Mark Twain best represent the realism movement in American literature at this time.

War has the ability to change many things about the world. While most associate the changes of war with boundaries and governments, people often forgot the influence it has over society and culture. The United States experienced a change similar to this shortly after the Civil war. Citizens were shown the brutality and devastation of war which lead to them having a grim outlook on the world. This viewpoint inspired a new generation of artists and authors who ,with their combined works, created Realism. Writers like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Abraham Cahan, Ambrose Bierce, and Henry James pushed the drastic shift from feelings to reality in the hopes of appealing to the more literate working class. Many stories, in order to capture reality, relied on similar techniques and themes such as: simplicity, truth, and criticism.

Language matters. More specifically, the words we use change the way we perceive the world around us. This theory, known as linguistic relativism, gives us a way of analyzing the motivations and worldviews of characters in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the way they discuss the problems presented to them. This is especially important when discussing reform, as a character’s changes in speech can help us asses the affect their environment has on their ability to ameliorate the situation. In Chapter 36, Trying to Help Jim, Twain presents a cynical picture of reformation, arguing that regression pervades

The story named 'The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' was published in 1865. The edition that I studied had the story with a preface in which Twain has angrily addressed some Frenchman who have tried to translate his story in french and had ended up making fun of it. So Mr. Twain has given the original story to him, then his own translation in french and then the translation in English of the story that the Frenchman published in the article.

Because “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” has an additional story within it, distinguishing reality from anecdote could become difficult; but this isn’t the case because of the characters’ differences in dialogue. The narrator is the one who speaks the segments of Mark Twain’s underlying story, while Simon Wheeler tells the other account. The western mannerisms of Wheeler differ dramatically from the narrator’s more standard and proper English style. While Simon Wheeler tells of “a feller…by the name of Jim Smiley,” the narrating character describes Wheeler as a man with “an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.” The tones these characters think and talk in don’t blur together in the smooth transition between their

In the short story titled ”The Notorious Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County” the author, Mark Twain, conjures a story about Smiley and his frog that can jump on command. In the story, it is in a first person point of view as a person asked a friend known as Simon Wheeler. A man known as Leonidas W. Smiley and his pet frog that can jump on command. He is also known as Jim. Jim was a humongous better.

The narrator clearly states, “it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence...as long and tedious as...useful to me,” (Twain 1), which suggests that someone tries to deceive the narrator because the person in question makes the conversation tedious for the narrator. When Twain wrote this excerpt from page 5, “well thish-yer Smiley had a teller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail… ‘Oh! Hang smiley and his afflicted cow!’ I muttered...I departed,” he hints at deception by talking about the guy who tries account a far fetched tale regarding Smiley while the narrator proceeds to not fall for his acts of deception. The guy’s reaction to the comment about Smiley suggests that he is intelligent enough to come to the conclusion that Smiley is a fictional character. The final example of narration which supports the theme of deception leading to unexpected consequences, “‘What might it be that you’ve got in the box...It might be a parrot or it might be a canary, may be, but it ain't it's only just a frog.’” This important piece of narration shows that Smiley possess a smart yet sarcastic attitude, which is meant to lure in unsuspecting people for him to trick, but instead he ends up being deceived at his own game. Narration

“Hop-Frog,” composed by Edgar Allen Poe, begins as a classic fairy tale that many are familiar with, but “Hop-Frog” takes a dark and brutal turn as the jokes and humiliation reach a certain extent. Poe introduces Hop Frog and Trippetta first as victims of the king and his seven cabinet council men; due to their physical features and status as the king’s slaves for entertainment and humor. As the reader proceeds to read the great detail given by Poe, the reader begins to understand the abnormality in Hop Frog’s thinking and actions when he becomes fed up. Hop-Frog has no intention in causing any harm or brutality, but there needs to be an end to the torture and embarrassment caused to Hop-Frog and Trippetta. Hop-Frog’s act of revenge is the act of a sane man, but this is due to the abuse of power and authority by the king and his seven council men which lead to the devastating end.

Leonidas W. Smiley is an extraordinary character. He is up for any challenge. In the story, he even bet on his friend’s wife. “Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Providence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, ‘Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, anyway.’” To sum it up, Rev. Smiley was addicted to gambling. He had a knack for finding things that seemed ordinary until you saw them in action. Still, despite his tendencies towards fooling others, Smiley is a really trusting person. This is because, though he fools others, he doesn’t cheat them (Shmoop, 2015). He is usually the one to get cheated. You will almost find your self-feeling sorry for him when he is cheated out of his money because he wasn’t a sore loser. But, when he finds out he is ben cheated, his anger is completely understandable. Even at the end of the story when Simon Wheeler starts to tell another story, you know that there must have been lots

In the folktale, “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain is a mid 18th century story of a man traveling to the East for a friend, in search of another. The narrator ran into a man named Simon Wheeler at a bar and the man told him a story of a guy name Jim Smiley. Jim Smiley was a good guy, but he also liked to make bets. Smiley had never lost a bet before and got used to winning, until he stepped up to the wrong person. One thing is to lose fairly and worse is when you lose to cheating. The author included extraordinary amount of figurative language throughout the story, which creates a wild-western setting.

The novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” both written by Mark Twain, are similar in terms of Twain’s style using figurative language, syntax, and different types of diction.

In this humorous short story, the author incorporates the traditional form of the tall tale into a story of his own creation. The author of this short story produces a sort of literal debate between town and country. In appropriating this fictional frog story for his own purposes, Twain makes various changes in the composition. Mark Twain the narrator embellishes in his interesting story about his encounter with Simon Wheeler in the mining settlement at Angel’s Camp.

Mark Twain the writer of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of the Calaveras Country” and Charles Dickens the author of “The Baron of Grogzwig”, both presented disjunction as a literary technique to evoke a numerous response from their readers. Disjunction was seen in Mark Twain’s story during the part when the story started in a way the narrator was in search for Leonidas Smiley and ended up getting information about Jim Smiley. Just as the Baron who wanted to die but ended up realizing that it was not worth it. For me, this literary technique caught the attention of most readers.