The Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County Essay

674 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Mark twain literary analysis

An Analysis of Mark Twain: The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Samuel Langhorne, known as Mark Twain, is one of the first writers of the 19th Century. He is also known for his humorous writing. Some of Twain’s major works include Adventure of Huckleberry Finn,Puddn’head Wilson, Roughing it. Innocents Abroad and the short story” The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (Blooms 53). The jumping frog story, which was published under different titles, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “The Notorious Frog of Calaveras County” made Mark Twain successful (Rasmussen 618-619). I believe that the reason Jim Smiley is so successful is because he uses deceit.
For Instance, Smiley uses a bull pub name Andrew Jackson to deceives his opponents in betting. Jackson looks are deceiving, people look at his outer appearance and assume that he is weak, lame, and worthless. In reality, Jackson may appear to have some physical handicaps but he is highly experienced, exceedingly trained, and can overthrow any dog. In the beginning of a fight Jackson lets …show more content…

His compulsive gambling is out of control. When he is given the opportunity to arrange the bet, or, even if the other person arrange the bet, he always win by deceiving the other person. Smiley is very confident in his betting tactics and think that he can out smart everyone, until he is outsmarted and deceived by the stranger. The stranger proved that Smiley is not the only person with secrets and deceit. Out of all those wrongful winning, Smiley finally gets a taste of his own medicine. Smileys use of deceiving tactics has caught up to him and he is left puzzled. In this story, Mark Twain has illustrated to us that what comes around goes around. The Golden rule is that if you do wrong, wrong will come back on you. It may be sooner who it may be later but it will come back. It is better to fair in your dealing than to be dishonest,

Show More
Related

  • Caricature In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

    1373 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mark Twain quickly rose to fame after the release of his story, “Jim Smiley and the Jumping Frog,” and he continued to make a name for himself through the release of stories such as The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Twain saw immense success and fame; he was easily recognizable and wildly popular, even to the point of being called “the greatest American humorist of his age” by the New York Times. In short, Twain was as close to being an international sensation as one could hope for in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, it wasn’t until the later days of his writing career that Twain became so well known. As photography was expensive and hard to come by, caricatures were the method of choice to portray celebrities. And, as

    Read More

  • Mark Twain of Huck Finn - Satire

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mark Twain, a famous American writer and satirist, wrote many highly acclaimed books throughout the world. His masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earned him recognition as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. The novel follows a teenage boy named Huck Finn, whose father is an alcoholic. Due to his father's violence, Huck runs away and meets a runaway slave named Jim. Instead of turning Jim in, Huck goes against society and decides to help Jim break free from slavery.

    Read More

  • The Presidential Candidate Rhetorical Analysis

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Autobiographical Nature of The Mesmerizer, by Mark Twain

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    Twain’s attitude changes from the first half of the story to the last half since it is many years later. But, years later, when he thinks about how much pride he had in his successful crime, he cannot relieve himself of guilt. In fact, he can’t even convince his own mother that he lied. “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” (6). He built his heroism on a lie and now that he tries to tell the truth to his mother, she won’t believe that he lied. After all, they say that people believe what they want to believe, even in the face of truth. Twain, as a teenager, participated in Simmons’s show for the attention, and thirty-five years later his guilty conscience continues to haunt him. But, it wasn’t only his wrongdoing, the townspeople and Simmons are all to blame.

    Read More

  • Portrayal of Jim’s Life in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Using Lies to Define Morality of Characters in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mark Twain once said, "Lie--an abomination before the Lord and an ever present help in time of trouble." Twain's description of deceit gives it a type of double meaning. This idea of lying being used for good as well as evil is not unheard of. Many time people find it necessary to lie to maintain a greater good or save a life. However, all too often, people lie for self-serving, immoral purposes. In this quote, Twain elegantly shows the delicate balance between good and evil in the performance of the same act. Furthermore, Twain also shows this complex thought in his portrayal of characters in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twains novel emulates his quote, juxtaposing the good and bad aspects of stretching the truth. Throughout the novel, Twain provides numerous commentaries on the morality of characters. His display of deception in the story continually serves to improve the reader?s understanding of a character?s moral integrity, based on the nature and intent of the lie. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses the lies of numerous characters to better define the moral ambiguity of those characters.

    Read More

  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    1359 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since the day the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was introduced to the readers, the critical world has been littered with numerous essays and theses on Mark Twain’s writing achievement, yet many of them are about the writing style of Bildungsroman, the symbolic meanings of the raft and Mississippi river, the morality and racism color. Whereas few of them ever talked about why Mark Twain wrote so many lies in this novel. Probably because people usually thought that the splendor of this masterpiece will be obscured by the immorality nature of lying. But actually this is no the thing, even Mark Twain himself does’t think lying is an immoral thing. As what he said in his lecture on a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, the essay later published as “On The Decay of the Art of Lying” , he called the art of lying “a Virtue, a Principle...a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal” (Twain, “On The Decay of the Art of Lying”). We can see that Mark Twain has a mature understanding about the value of lying and he wanted to share with us his philosophy of lying through Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Therefore, the major task of the paper is to investigate this philosophy of lying in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

    Read More

  • The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mark Twain, one of the most distinguished American authors in the 19th century, made his living by writing “light, humorous verse, but evolved this literature into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind.” The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, written by Mark Twain, focuses on a narrator from the east suffering through a Westerner’s tale about a jumping frog as the author attempts to entertain the reader through its oddities in the short story, its humorous First, Mark Twain uses educated diction and obscure descriptions of Simon Wheeler in an attempt to entertain the general public reading the newspaper “The Saturday,” the newspaper where Mark Twain published his original version of his short story. To begin, Mark Twain uses the character of Jim Smiley to interest the reader and keep them hooked on the obscure personality of Mr. Smiley and his frog. Jim Smiley, a man addicted to gambling and competition, fools others through deception and false manipulations and gains the reader’s attention through his dedication to winning and competing. Through clever manipulation of words, Jim downplays the skill of his investments (his animals) and in this case, his frog, while failing to mention the skill of the frog and the months of training he put into training this particular animal.... ...

    Read More

  • Jane Smiley Is Wrong

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Literary Legends: Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain

    766 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...nfortunate events, Mark Twain became very bitter, cynical and reclusive from the outside world. Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic style of writing and Mark Twain’s humorous and realism tone of writing have played a large role in the reasons of why literature is the way it is today.

    Read More

  • Life and Works of Mark Twain

    1625 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mark Twain is considered as one of the most renowned authors of his time. He attained worldwide success, very early in his professional career. Twain was mostly known for writing realistic novels, in which the language and the mindset of the people reflected the traditions and values of their environment. As he spent ample time near the Mississippi River, the symbolism of the river and its significance is reflected in his books. Overall, Mark Twain was a celebrated author, who relied on realistic reflections of his own observations, with an added mixture of humor.

    Read More

  • Mark Twain Research Paper

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mark Twain who's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 and later died April 21, 1910. He was best known as an American humorist and for his realistic view of America in the early nineteenth century through his novels and other stories he had wrote. He had the whole worlds interest through his expert writings and lectures.

    Read More

  • Mark Twain's Personality Revealed in His Writing

    2185 Words  | 5 Pages

    Literary artists refuse to be categorized, defined, and completely fathomed by any standardized paradigm, but a writer's work exhibits his or her personality traits. Though authors are incapable of being defined by mere personality traits, literary accomplishments, and literary criticisms, an author's personality can be used to sketch a limited definition of his or her literature. Mark Twain's literature manifests his personality's candor, graphicness, humor, and criticalness that William Dean Howells describes in "My Mark Twain." These attributes are evident in "Old Times on the Mississippi," The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," and "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." Howells' portrayal of Twain facilitates some understanding of Twain's fiction, but by no means is Mark Twain's literature as simple as four personality traits. The traits of Twain's literature transcend simple entertainment, and he enlightens the reader about the need to reform literature, religion, society, and the individual.

    Read More

  • Satire In Mark Twain's Short Stories

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mark Twain uses humor, irony, and satire in his short stories. Also known as Samuel Clemens, he was a writer of the late 19th century in America. Most famously known for his work The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain was born on November 30th, 1835, in the state of Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth child in his family, making him the youngest child.

    Read More

  • Mark Twain's Influence on American Literature

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pseudonym Mark Twain, has been central to American literature for over a century. His seemingly effortless diction accurately exemplified America’s southern culture. From his early experiences in journalism to his most famous fictional works, Twain has remained relevant to American writing as well as pop culture. His iconic works are timeless and have given inspiration the youth of America for decades. He distanced himself from formal writing and became one of the most celebrated humorists. Mark Twain’s use of the common vernacular set him apart from authors of his era giving his readers a sense of familiarity and emotional connection to his characters and himself.

    Read More

More about The Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County Essay

Open Document