What Is Jim Smiley's Tone In The Celebrated Jumping Frog

Life-Giving Laughter of Mark Twain

In the short story criticism of “the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” essay by Edgar M. Branch, the recurring topic of character analysis is prominent along with the very direct references of literary regionalism. With Branch frequently mentioning the area of San Francisco in his article, it gravitates towards the political, regional, and cultural aspect of Mark Twain’s “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, which, is rightfully based in Northern California. The point of this paper will be to analyze the characters and how the literary regionalism affects the story’s pace and tone. Branch’s main topics in his essay include a lot about that of Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain’s life. He

In which I interpret it as touching on Smiley’s love for betting on and earning a considerable amount of money from his gambling habit. Another aspect of the regionalism that can be identified in the story is the seemingly southern hospitality and somewhat naïve, generous, but also egotistic nature of Jim Smiley, because that would be part of the cultural and stereotypical aspects of the west. When he simply leaves his prized jumping frog with a complete stranger to go and fetch a frog for him to compete with (probably set on finding a frog much less skilled than that of his own), Smiley does not expect the stranger to sabotage his chance of winning the bet. Which adds an ironic tone to the story. Smiley, who had always been considerately lucky at anything he bet on, decides to show some of that well-meaning southern hospitality (or perhaps he felt sorry that he would be taking advantage of the stranger because he knew his frog was the absolute best) and ends up being outsmarted by the stranger he tried to

Andrew Jackson was smaller and a dog that didn’t seem like much to the rest of the crowd but ended up having quite the bite towards his opponents; obviously being a reference to president Andrew Jackson who, shared some of the same personality traits and had recently been in office as president a few decades before the “Jumping Frog” was published. Dan’l Webster was, of course, also political commentary on the Politician by the same name who served around the same time as Andrew Jackson. Jim Smiley may have also named these pets based on their determined or fighting spirit. In this way, with the use of animals as his commentary he could rightfully get away with the comical satire he wrote while not explicitly stating these animals were in fact, who they were in reference