The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

In this story, the vernacular is used by Simon Wheeler, a man who relates the tale of Jim Smiley and his trained frog to the narrator. When telling this tale, Simon uses lots of vernacular words,...

The story that Simon Wheeler tells the narrator in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was not original with Mark Twain. It was, nevertheless, the first story that caused Twain to...

The very notion that there would be a young reverend in a mining camp is humorous because mining camps were notorious for all manner of immoral behavior and the absence of virtuous women and men of...

According to the opening paragraph, the narrator's friend simply wanted to have some contact with his friend's friend Leonidas W. Smiley. The narrator's friend wrote him "from the East." In those...

This humorous story by Mark Twain is considered a frame narrative because it consists of a story within a story. The outer story, the frame story, is the story of the narrator's interaction with...

The main irony in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is that Jim Smiley is outfoxed by the stranger. According to Simon Wheeler: Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he...

Mark Twain's use of exaggeration is great in this story, and it is one of the aspects that makes it so humorous. For instance, in paragraph 5, Twain is describing the bull pup, Andrew Jackson, a...

Realism was the tendency of writers and artists in Mark Twain's era (the late 1800s to early 1900s) to create work that reflected real life, without romanticizing anything or making events too...

In the famous short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain, the unnamed narrator goes to an old tavern in a mining camp called Angel's for an interview at the...

In Mark Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the sesterer, Simon Wheeler, exaggerates his description of the frog's talents. For instance, he acts as though the frog were...

Wheeler uses hyperbole, an exaggeration that is a type of figurative language, when he says of Smiley, "he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for...

In Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the narrator sits through Simon Wheeler's long tale about Old Jim Smiley and his bets (mostly because Wheeler has backed the...

In this story, Jim Smiley is outwitted when he makes a bet with a stranger and loses. Remember that Jim Smiley is well-known in Cavaleras County as a man who loves to make bets on pretty much...

Here are six more instances of hyperbole to describe Jim Smiley: If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on...

“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” is the perfect story to showTwain’s style of writing a humorous story. The story starts out with a narrator in search of someone or something, and...

Based on the information that the narrator gives readers, I think a reader could say that Smiley is mighty proud of his frog for two reasons. The first reason Smiley is proud of his frog is because...

The story's first paragraph is a confession by the narrator that he had been duped. This kind of self-effacing humor is universally amusing, as it is human nature to laugh at oneself and invite...

The tone Mark Twain uses in the frame story of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is one of chagrin mingled with grudging admiration. The unnamed narrator had received a letter from...

The narrator finds Wheeler to be annoying and amusing all at the same time, but is in reality a bit irritated with Wheeler's ramblings, and anxious to escape them. You can find evidence of this...

First. the term grostesque humor is loosely defined as something comic and based on a character or event that is painful to see and funny at the same time, bizarre, abnormal, unnatural--it makes...

One key feature of Simon Wheeler's storytelling is that he is long-winded, or rambling. The narrator has been asked to visit Simon Wheeler and to inquire about a certain man named Leonidas W....

The dialect reflected in the speech of Simon Wheeler sets him apart from the narrator, whose manner of speaking involves more sophisticated word choices. Simon Wheeler does not sound like a highly...

One could argue that the moral of the story is that just about anyone can be fooled, no matter how smart or educated they are. This is a perfectly plausible answer as it's in keeping with a similar...

Twain uses several literary devices in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". The first technique we notice is that the tale is a "frame story". That means that one story, the story...

In "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twin, the narrator hears the story of the jumping frog from Simon Wheeler. He embarks on a trip to find Wheeler at the behest of a...

Simon Wheeler's face is described as expressionless; "he never smiled, he never frowned," meaning that he never gave anything away to the narrator in terms of his mood or intentions other than...

The stranger, Mark Twain, utters the following at the end before he departs: "Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" He states that he muttered these words "good-naturedly," which is patently...

The first metaphor used to describe the horse is "the fifteen minute nag". This is because she looked so sickly and slow that people would give her a head start in a race. She would let the other...

Jim is opportunistic, obsessive, sneaky, and ultimately naive. 1. Jim is opportunistic: the storyteller, Simon Wheeler, describes Jim as "lucky," but really Jim's supposed luck comes from his habit...

The use of the vernacular in literature is a technique that is particularly effective when a story is written, as this one is, in the voice of a storyteller—that is, somebody who is relating the...

Twain made use of the vernacular in this and in other works of his fiction to add an element of authenticity to his work. Clearly, having the dialogue that the characters speak set down as they...

The humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain has a plot structure using a literary device known as a frame, in which one story is told within another story....

Jim Smiley's frog, Dan'l Webster, was a well-trained amphibian that Smiley used to enhance his winnings at gambling. Smiley had invested heavily in Dan'l. Although he was just a common bullfrog...

Jim Smiley was a man who was hopelessly addicted to gambling. He placed bets compulsively, but he also invested in gambling seriously as his occupation. He would bet on just about any random event...

One ironic element of Mark Twain's story is the ease with which the celebrated frog is defeated. The eponymous amphibian turns out a total disappointment, not through its own fault, but because of...

Twain wants to put the reader into the shoes of the narrator, to get us to imagine that we are there in this remote Western tavern, listening to this shaggy-dog story. And because that story is so...

In all large countries, regional dialects exist that differ from the standard form of the national language in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. In most of the European nation-states, what...

The first major success for fledgling writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The story was not Twain's original creation but a well-known tall...

Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," is that much more entertaining when he personifies the animals. He does a fine job presenting the [nearly] unbelievable...

There are two kinds of irony in Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. The first That is encountered is verbal irony and the second encountered is situational irony. Verbal irony...

I think it is clear that this story lives, breathes and eats the "Old West" that you refer to in your question. Twain was a master of capturing a particular moment and context in history so...

Western humorists such as Mark Twain make extensive use of exaggeration, hyperbole. For example, westerner Simon Wheeler exaggerates when describing the frog's talents: "You never see a frog...

Mark Twain was a master at the art of satire. The significance behind the animal names, fifteen minute nag, Andrew Jackson, and Dan'l Webster is to convey distinct personalities to the reader....

The way the character of Simon Wheeler is developed is primarily through the tone that Twain has him recount his hilarious "tall tale" about the aforementioned frog. Note what the narrator tells us...

Readers should look to the fourth paragraph in order to find evidence to answer this question. The paragraph is somewhat lengthy with examples, but the main gist of why Smiley is the "curiosest...

Twain uses three elements classic to comedy to create a humorous story. First, as anyone who has read the Lemony Snickett stories knows, warning a reader from the outset that a story will be too...