Reading Notes W4: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, PART A

Citation: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" -Mark Twain pg.206-211

Themes:

Cleverness combined with lying and trickery: the narrators fried sent him on a mission just to trick him into staying to listen to an old westerner’s tall tale of Jim Smiley. Jim smiley is also clever, speaking in gravity to keep the narrator listening to his tale. Jim Smiley himself is clever, using trickery to win bets.

East vs. West: the east is the literate and educated, and the west is the uneducated but street-smart.

Literary Devices:

Local Color: Twain uses slang and diction to compare and contrast Easterners and Westerners of the time.

Tall Tale: The story of Smiley is a tall tale. It exaggerates the animals traits and skills. The title too is typical of tall tales. It is an exaggeration of the best jumping frog in all of the county, which isn’t necessarily true.

Satire: The whole story itself is satirical. It has a lot of irony. The narrator puts himself into a situation that could have been avoided. He chose to trust and listen to his friend and find Wheeler, and Smiley was trusted by many people despite his gambling background.

Diction: (East vs. West) The Easterner *narrator* is educated and you can tell by how he speaks, while the westerner *Wheeler* speaks in uneducated vernacular. (this plays into the theme of cleverness as the undereducated had more street smarts and managed to take up the narrator’s time)

Allusion: Wheeler says that Smiley’s dog had the name “Andrew Jackson” and a frog named “Daniel Webster” the first is a historical Us President, and the latter a New England Senator. Both historical Political figures. Why? Well…

-Andrew Jackson: Besides being a President, he was also a fierce war general, and so was the bull-pup.

-Daniel Webster: He was considered a brilliant man. Jim Smiley said that his frog was a “genius”

The allusions link also to anthropomorphism. The animals are given somewhat human characteristics. Smiley wanted to ‘learn the frog’ assuming it was a genius and can be educated. By giving his animals historical names, he gives them human-like characteristics.