1. The educational aspect portrayed in this text “The Notorious Jumping Frog”, was made very clear. Mark Twain brilliantly allowed the readers to see a difference between Easterners and Westerners through educated and uneducated diction. The narrator’s tone and choice of words used at the beginning of the text, revealed to me that he has academia background. The narrator stated, “I called on good natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler…” (Twain 121). When using the word garrulous, when in terms simply means chatty, right away this led me to think the narrator’s vocabulary was extensive. The narrator also carried a certain persona about himself, a persona of patience and self-control, being that he sat and listened to the very chatty Simon Wheeler’s without interrupting. …show more content…
Unlike the narrator, Simon Wheeler’s dialect and description of Jim Smiley was not so much formal. He used westernized slang words such as ‘feller’ and ‘thish-er’ when telling the story of Jimmy Smiley to the narrator (Twain 123). Although not specifically stated, Smiley seemed to have come from a background where survival by any means possible was the motto for life. Any means possible, meaning doing bizarre things that to another would seem classless. Mark Twain depicted Smiley as a man simply trying to make best out of life. It was perceived that formal education was not prevalent in his surroundings and street hustling was the way of life, perhaps passed on from previous generations. Overall, Twain was able to show the readers a distinct difference between Easternized and Westernized
“How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not” (11). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is known to encompass many aspects of society in the nineteenth century, the majority of which symbolized by one or more aspects the within the book. Perhaps the most crucial representation in perhaps Twain’s greatest novels is how society had, and has, many faults. Though this point could be made clear with many objects throughout the book, three of the more pressing come to mind. As the reader follows Young Huckleberry, or “Huck,” down the river, we encounter many things alongside him. One of these occurrences is a circus where a “drunk” man who is really a performer demonstrates a stunt, and the audience
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 itnot chaw ." Smiley uses some interesting and somewhat peculiar phrases at the end of the story:
We see everything through his eyes – and they are his eyes and not a pair of Mark Twain’s spectacles. And the comments on what he sees are his comments – the comments of an ignorant, superstitious, sharp, healthy boy, brought up as Huck Finn had been brought up; they are not speeches put into his mouth by the author (292).
The narrators wording clearly creates and fully illustrates a sense of class to his character which later becomes more separated as other characters are introduced.Another primary focus on Simon Wheeler. In paragraph seven he uses a more relaxed use of diction compared to the narrator. He states, “he ketched a frog and took him home, and said he cal’klated to educate him; and so he never done nothing but set in his backyard and learn that frog to jump.” This example provides a lower stance than the narrator in terms of wording and possible educational class. Wheeler is clearly understood through the story, although his use of old english provides a sense of old western or southern american which comes off as totally different from the narrator. As Wheeler speaks of the character known as Smiley it is clear that someone is even less concentrated on
The first half of Life on the Mississippi was ideally written and reading the extremely detailed and captivating account of Twain's apprenticeship was quite enjoyable. However, the second part of the book was not as fascinating. The short stories were frequently only two pages long and were not very well connected to be a clear read. Though a few of the characters Twain met on his journey were quite interesting, the majority of them merely served as an example of a certain characteristic which he wished to further discuss. This may be due to the fact that Twain was much older by the time he made the trip in the second half of the book, and he had grown aware of the various faults of humanity and thus wrote more analytically and critically than he did in the first half to reflect his change in character and the change of the times he lived in.
Twain attempts to show the reader that education is important to improve quality of life and avoid being exploited
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.
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 highly lauded novel by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, entertains the reader with one adventure after another by a young boy (and his runaway slave friend Jim) in the mid-1800s who is on strange but interesting path to adolescence and finally adulthood. What changes did he go through on the way to the end of the novel? And what was his worldview at the end of the novel? These two questions are approached and answered in this paper.
This quote from the story reconstructs the perspective on Twain’s diction because of the way using figurative language brings more interest into the story instead of putting things short and simple and using the this diction it’s playing a critical role for the figurative language in the
In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the young protagonist Huckleberry Finn runs away from his abusive father with Jim, a black slave. Throughout the novel, Huck encounters people that fail to understand the injustice of slavery and violence, despite their education. Although Huck lacks any substantial education, his moral values and judgment are highly developed. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses uneducated, colloquial diction and deliberate syntax to provide ironic contrast between Huck’s rudimentary level of education and profound use of moral judgment.
Authors use stylistic techniques to convey meaning and to bring richness and clarity to their pieces of writing. In the short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” a man named Smiley is cheated out of a bet after he was so confident that he was going to be victorious. In the short story “Cannibalism in the Cars,” a train full of political figures is stopped by a severe snowstorm, preventing them from continuing their journey. In “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “Cannibalism in the Cars,” Mark Twain uses imagery, characterization, and foreshadowing in order to aid a reader's understanding of the stories.
To fully understand the themes within Mark Twain’s novels we all must first understand his upbringing, where he was born, where he was raised, and what was going on within the era of his life. Samuel