Celebrated Jumping Frog

Twain mentions on how we as teenagers and smaller kids should consider on hearing and thinking more when adults try to give us advice, because most of them have already been through what we are living now. On the lesson he gives us an advice on how becoming a better liar can make you a much smarter person in a very humorous and entertaining way.

Twain uses local dialect throughout the story. Dialect enhances the story by painting a picture of the surroundings, giving a deeper understanding of the characters and adding local color. The following quotes show Twain's main purpose is using dialect, which is to emphasize the rural feel of the story's setting. On page 1189 the narrator says "He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you." On page 1190 the narrator says, "Other dogs jest by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze to it—not chaw…." Smiley uses some interesting and somewhat peculiar phrases at the end of the story:

Following the conclusion of Pudd’nhead Wilson, a novel written by Mark Twain in 1894, but taking place in the 1850s, it is obvious that the book was inundated with a myriad of differing themes. However, there is a theme that stands out in terms of being the most influential message conveyed by Twain. This theme is that deception does not succeed, nor have favorable outcomes. I was able to choose one specific scene from the novel that truly represents this theme. The scene that most symbolizes the backfiring and disadvantages of deception is in the scene where Tom is sold down the river. This scene is important because it accurately depicts the results of deception and epitomizes the role that trickery plays in one’s life.

In the story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain, the use of diction provides differences upon the certain class of characters. The text consist of three characters as the narrator looks for someone known as Smiley. He comes across a man by the name of Simon Wheeler and is caught in his story of another man by the name of Smiley which provides a story within a story. As clear of a difference as black and white, the diction of the narrator is more profound and well educated than other characters is this humorous fiction piece. The differences is the use of diction is a bit extreme, providing a possible time era and a separation in educational class.

One of the examples of Twain’s exaggeration is when Wheeler describes Smiley. He says that he would bet on anything, if he bet on how far a bug would go, he would follow that bug to Mexico. This gives the story a very humorous tone. In this story a feeling of regionalism is seen too because Smiley finds pride in his frog being the best in his area. Whereas Harte does not use humor as his main element to present the West, instead he uses comic relief. In Harte's story, the citizens of Poker Flat mining camp have decided to rid the county of trouble makers, and exile a gambler Mr. John Oakhurst, prostitutes the Duchess and the Mother Shipton, and a drunken thief Uncle Billy. The exiles must find shelter and head for the next camp, Sandy Bar which is located further into the mountains. Sandy Bar is a day journey and the banished have very few Supplies, plus it is winter, and snow is expected. Harte chooses to use sarcastic narrative to emphasize the direness of the group's situation, plus, to emphasize the lack of the group's propriety and common sense. One example of Harte's humorous, sarcastic narrative is the line, Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate. Another example would be, but they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency

Throughout the novel, Twain shows his contempt for corrupt human nature. Although these instances are often satirized and exaggerated, the message is still the same. For instance, when the King and the Duke first start to lie about being the dead Peter Wilks’ brothers to obtain his money, Huck says, “It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,” (191). In this instance Twain is utilizing Huck to show his aversion to the way people lie and cheat, and how a couple of people can make a bad name for all of us. Another example is when Jim sells the King and Duke out to the townspeople and they are carried on a pole, tarred and feathered. Although Huck, has tried to escape the King and Dukes several occasions and has witnessed the cruelties put on others and lies they tell, he does not think that they deserve similar treatment. In fact, he says, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another,” (269). Through Huck, Twain is voicing his opposition to how people treat one another, whether they deserve it or not. Thus Twain is using his novel to voice his enmity for the cruelty in human nature.

Both authors, Mark Twain and Arthur Miller, use situational irony as a way to evoke emotion. After running away from home, Huckleberry encounters another runaway who is escaping from oppression based on race. Although it is frowned upon, Huckleberry helps a runaway slave escape, "Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I will. People would call me a low-down despise me for keeping mum—but that don't make no difference. I ain't a-going to tell, and I ain't a-going, anyways.” (Twain 43) Considering Huckleberry was raised in a slave cultured environment, the readers would not have imagined that Huckleberry would have helped the runaway slave. Although the readers were waiting for Huckleberry to turn his back on Jim

Smiley has missed the point of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and has depressed the book to a fractions of its ideas. She sees the book as a failed social commentary on racism and enabling the reader to avoid responsibility. A Short sighted sentiment from Mrs. Smiley, but Mark Twain has a light directed elsewhere. He lights out the territory of social improvements by vexing the reader to view from different vantage points.

Twain had integrated made the story a little more humorous to read. Twain writes, ”He was a

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.” In a world filled with life-or-death decisions that occur within the splash of an oar, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrates how Huck uses his intelligence, or lack thereof, as his current situation and familial circumstances sometimes lead him to abandon his judgement when it may not be “necessary”. Although Huck can be situationally acute in familiar situations, his lack of experience in the world and his immaturity show that his mind is a tabula rasa, or a blank slate, that leads him to to use a laissez-faire judgement towards people he has never dealt before.

In the folktale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain the author has a main character named Jim Smiley. Smiley is the kind of person who doesn't think before he speaks and loves to gamble on everything. In this story the author presents an arrogant tone throughout the story with Smiley to express to the reader Smiley’s personality. When analysing the character Smiley, his words coney arrogance. For example, Smiley bets against his friends wife’s health.

Twain uses deliberate syntactical patterns in order to create an ironic disparity between Huck’s strong moral conscience and his inability to convey his judgments in a grammatically correct way. For example, Huck feels guilty about the plans of his acquaintances to con money from a mourning woman and “felt so ornery and low down and mean” that he decided to “hive that money for them or bust” (175). Twain uses the juxtaposition of Huck’s decision that stealing money from the woman was immoral and his plans to steal the money back from the conmen in his syntactical pattern to emphasize Huck’s ironic method of redeeming a crime with an action similar to the crime. Twain contrasts Additionally, when Huck encounters criminals while traveling down the river with Jim, he plans to hide the boat “in a place

Whereas Huck and Jim hide their reality from others and keep up different facades in order to stay safe from society. Lying and deception play a large role throughout Mark Twain’s, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as it is both a reason and an escape from conflict. Both lying and deception are also used as a way to show the stark difference between appearances and reality because lying is what hides the reality from Huck and the rest of the characters within the novel.

Twain’s satire is that he wants the kids to take his advice and learn from it. Normally you get advice to be patient and diligent in college or when you get a career, but in this case he gives you this advice to become a batter liar in a humorous and entertaining way.

“The lowest intellect, like the highest, possesses a skill of some kind and takes a keen pleasure in testing it, proving it, perfecting it” (Mark Twain). “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was one of Mark Twain’s first works and it helped people start to notice who he was. This short story was about someone listening to a man telling a story about a gambler and a frog. Although the story itself sounds a bit weird, that was one of the ways of writing that Twain was best known for. The writing style that Twain uses in this work, and many others, helped create his success and makes him a better writer. In this specific short story, the speaker spoke very seriously and casually which countered the tone that was most based on the listener being annoyed that they had to hear his story. This aspect of the story helped contribute more towards Twain’s writing style, and his style yet to come. “In 1865 his story about the jumping frog of Calaveras County, which was published in New York and reprinted in papers around the United States, started to make him celebrated too.” (Stephan Railton) Although The Jumping Frog wasn’t Twain’s most popular piece by a long shot, it did very well for him at the time. At this point in Twain’s writing, it was the his first great success which helped make it as timeless as it is. He later went on to write famous books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which both shared the humor that Twain is most