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In the story,”The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain is about this person who makes a request from his friend who is looking for a man who goes by LEonidas W. Smiley. But as the friend who found an old wheeler he tells his story of how he knew a man that went by Jim Smiley. But in his story we learn that Jim Smiley likes to gamble on anything. On one day he gambled that his frog would jump higher than anyone in Calaveras County. Mark Twain uses Diction to play with his words to describe the way people are in the south.
To begin with, in paragraph 4 it described the way people in the south. It quotes as I follow,” There was a feller here once who went by the name of Jim Smiley.” From this quote Mark Twain uses his word
The first similarity is that both of the characters Jim Smiley, in Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and John Oakhurst , Outcast of Poker Flat, are both foolish men lead on by strangers. The stranger in Outcast of Poker Flat is the weather. The line “As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles” (Harte) shows that the weather was an enormous player in how the game was unraveled. In Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Jim Smiley was fooled by a stranger that he wanted to race frogs with. He left his frog in the hands of someone who only wanted to be mischievous and cheat his way through life. In the line “And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot.” (Twain) the guy filled the frog up with shot so he would not be able to do anything as he weighed too much to even
Mark Twain’s use of humor in the story mocks and shines light on the issues of our society’s political system from back then that continue
Smiley apparently does not “hold any grudges against Huck…,” but rather “…Mark Twain, who knew how to give Huck a voice but didn’t know how to give him novel.” She argues that Jim’s freedom is not possible. Twain only knew the Mississippi River, and authors usually only write what they know. To have Huck and Jim sail down the Ohio, would have both ended the novel, but also take away from the “artistic integrity” of Twain. On the Mississippi, Huck can have has adventures, which is Twain’s purpose of the...
Smiley. Instead of information on the Reverend, the narrator is told the story of Jim Smiley, a gambler who involves animals in his hobby. After losing bets with many other animals, Smiley comes upon a frog that can jump a remarkable distance and attempts to bet with it, however, he is cheated out by his opponent who hinders the frog by filling its mouth with buckshot. The setting of this story takes place around a mining settlement where the storyteller Simon Wheeler resides. We are given the evidence of the time period as Wheeler has to go outside and tend to work when he is needed near the end of this story. More evidence of this is given from the plot of this Wheeler's story as Smiley is a man who uses animals as gambling tools in this time period where people did not have the luxury of large gambling areas such as casinos. Animals would have been used much for betting as people could raise them and then use them as tools for one's own gain even though the conditions for them may have been harsh. Lastly, the style that Mark Twain, the author uses to portray Simon Wheeler immensely gives details to how people spoke in the 1880s. This is shown by the way he speaks to the narrator and expresses fascination with Jim Smiley's
The theme of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is a amusing story about Jim Smiley and how he trained a frog and used his frog for gambling. There are several ways this story relates to the realism era. Realism is a attempt to represent subject matter truthfully without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions or implausible,exotic and supernatural elements.
According to a criticism on the short story in the second volume of Short Stories for Students, writers of local color attempt to exaggerate cultural differences (Schmidt 27). The genre of writing generally focuses on unsophisticated characters in a specific part of America (Schmidt 27). In Twain’s short story, the narrator travels from eastern American to a western mining town in search of Leonidas W. Smiley. When he is trying to obtain information about the man he is searching for, he encounters Simon Wheeler, the stereotypical western frontiersman who rambles on about a man named Jim Smiley that had a pet frog who could jump higher than any of the other member of his
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is a delightfully entertaining piece of work. The characters are developed beautifully through fantastic descriptions, amusing actions, and mostly through smooth, flowing, and terrific dialogue. The dialogue is, indeed, the main attraction of this event. Simon Wheeler's speech is optimistic, and above all, very friendly. Wheeler tells of Smiley's antics as any great story teller would. Wheeler offers his own observations generously. They are casual and hospitable. Wheeler, speaking of Smiley's betting habit, interjects that, "Why, it never made no difference to him- he'd bet on anything- the dangdest feller" (113). This observation is helpful and funny. Wheeler also offers a fabulous story to illustrate his point. He tells of Smiley making a bet that a man's wife will not improve in health contradictory to what the doctors say. The absurdity of such a bet leaves the reader laughing out loud, in spite of such a morbid joke. Even the frog is personified and molded carefully into the most individual and unique frog ever to hop along. The frog is described by Wheeler as modest, straightforward, and gifted. "Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog..." (114). Daniel's aptitude for intelligent thought is evidenced by his ability to catch flies on command. Again, a most absurd assertion but, nonetheless, very comedic. Oddly, Daniel is compared to a cat. Wheeler observes that, "He'd [Smiley] give him a little pinch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut- see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat- footed and all right, like a cat" (114). One could argue that Daniel is the main character of the story. The actual narrator of the story is an old friend of Smiley. The friend's brief relationship with Wheeler is also rather interesting. Twain does not say directly that the man is not particularly fond of Wheeler, but alludes to that through the narrator's dialogue. Smiley's old friend sits down with Wheeler and describes the act as such: "Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph" (113). Through the man's choice of words the reader quickly realizes that this is not a pleasurable experience to him.
the race, it contains a lot of implausible details. This implausibility in Mark Twain's writing
Twain describes local customs and the ways that the characters behave to create a more realistic setting for the story. In the story the characters engage in behavior or activities that would be unusual for a regular person to do. For example, the narrator says:
Jim is one perfect example of the message that Twain is trying to convey. As Jim’s character builds, his english is broken, and at times, is difficult to read. Twain has done this on purpose, to emphasize Jim’s lack of an education and the treatment he gets as a slave. In the beginning chapters of the book, Jim hears a sound and says “say-who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef i didn’ hear sumf’n…” When reading Jim’s dialogue, the reader must have some reflection on the way his speaking is a result of slavery and the purposeful withholding of education.
Mark Twain, who is a realistic fiction writer, incorporates satire and humor in his writing, including Archetypal elements to modify how the reader interprets the story. He uses many archetypal characters like Huck and Jim who both can be argued as the heroes. They both have good intentions and help others. Mark Twain portrays Jim as a deeply caring and loyal friend. Jim becomes a father figure to Huck, helping him realize the human face of slavery. Twain Portrays Huck as a young and naive boy who has been under the wrong influence for a long time. Another archetypal element that Mark Twain uses is Jims Quest for freedom. This was a quest for most all African Americans, to run away north so you could be free. But Jim was one of the few who was brave enough to do so; that’s he can be classified as the hero in the story. But Jim’s life is not too bad compared to historical records about the lives of slaves. Even though he had to struggle for his freedom, he didn’t have any good reason to leave. His life contested of helping round and not doing hard enduring work like some of the other slaves. The way Jim’s life is portrayed in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Mark Twain criticizes the life of African Americans at the time.
“The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County” is a short story by Mark Twain that deals with deception and cleverness. This story is a first person account of an incident in which the (nameless) narrator was tricked by a friend of his into listening to a lengthy story told by the monotonous and lethargic Simon Wheeler. Ironically, the story Wheeler tells regarding the “celebrated jumping frog” is about a man named Jim Smiley who, like the narrator, is beguiled and deceived by another individual. In Wheeler’s story, Jim Smiley practices a certain level of deception and trickery on a regular basis and ends up having the tables turned on him. This story suggests that trickery and deceit will eventually catch up with you.
Mark Twain is world renowned for his authentic portrayal of southern dialect. Twain’s phonetic spelling of words, such as “genuwyne” rather than “genuine” and “swaller” instead of “swallow,” communicated the southern way of speech of his diverse characters in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain 54-78). He breathed life into his characters and gave them personality through his style and word choice. For example, Aunt Polly’s diction differed significantly from that of Huck Finn’s, and this hinted at the education, age, and gender of each character. Variations in the dialogue of characters and narration evoked a wide range of emotions as well as completed the imagery of each character and scenario. Additionally, the language of each character was kept consistent, realistic, and natural. Twain’s convincing prose distinguished him from the decorous authors of that time who wrote with acute formality.
“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain is one of Twain’s many stories that depicts his use of local color and regionalism. The story starts off with an unnamed character receiving a letter from a friend asking him to apprehend more information about Reverend Leonidas Smiley. The narrator believes that Leonidas Smiley never came to the mining camp and that this trip is a waste of his time. Once he arrives at the tavern he searches for Simon Wheeler, who supposedly knows of Reverend Smiley. As he begins to speak Wheeler recalls another man, Jim Smiley, who was at the camp. Jim Smiley, a gambler, would bet on anything and everything that he thought he could make a profit off of. He rarely lost any of the bets and was very lucky. His luck ran out when he met a stranger who shared his skills. Smiley bet that his frog could out jump any frog in the county and the stranger was willing to take that bet. While Smiley went off to find the stranger a frog; the stranger filled Smiley’s frog with gunpowder. Once Smiley returned to the stranger with the frog they had the r...
The author argues that Huck Finn’s speech patterns as well as his personality is based on an earlier character that Mark Twain wrote about called “Sociable Jimmy,” a character based on a young African-American boy that was sent to watch him. The author argues that Twain unconsciously borrowed a number of influences from African-Americans, such as vocabulary and grammatical structures, and that by placing those qualities into the character of Huck Finn, a white