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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

by Mark Twain

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Narrator's Involvement and Perception of Simon Wheeler

Summary:

In Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the narrator becomes involved with Simon Wheeler due to a prank by a friend who sends him to inquire about a fictional Leonidas W. Smiley. This prompts Wheeler to recount the tedious tale of Jim Smiley, a gambler with a notorious jumping frog. The narrator finds Wheeler's storytelling monotonous and frustrating, viewing Wheeler as well-meaning but overly verbose, ultimately feeling trapped by the long-winded narrative.

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How did the narrator become involved with Simon Wheeler?

The narrator in the story has a friend who is still in "the East," as opposed to the West, where the narrator is living. The narrator's friend writes and asks him to look up a man named Simon Wheeler to find out how his, the narrator's friend's, friend Leonidas W. Smiley is. Leonidas Smiley is a boyhood friend of the narrator's friend—or so the narrator is led to believe—who used to live at Angel's mining camp with Wheeler. It turns out that the narrator's friend was playing a practical joke on him. There really was no person named Leonidas W. Smiley. The narrator's friend knew that if the narrator inquired about any man named "Smiley," it would remind "good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler" about the infamous Jim Smiley. Simon Wheeler would then launch into a long, detailed story about Jim Smiley, and the narrator would be caught listening to his...

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interminable reminiscences for an excruciatingly long time. This is exactly what happens, and the bulk of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" consists of Simon Wheeler's recounting the escapades of Jim Smiley, inveterate gambler.

Ironically, the narrator prepares his readers for his story by warning them that what they are about to read is something that was intended to "bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me." Readers are thus challenged to find out if they are better able to endure Simon Wheeler's ramblings than the narrator was, and readers are rewarded by the side-splitting narrative style of the simple old resident of Angel's mining camp.

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What does the narrator think of Simon Wheeler and his story?

In "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain, the narrator, ostensibly in search of a different man named Leonidas Smiley, hears a tale that the old man Simon Wheeler tells him about someone named Jim Smiley. Wheeler says that Jim Smiley loved to gamble and had a frog that could jump farther than any other. A stranger took him up on the wager but, just before the contest, filled Smiley's frog with buckshot so that it couldn't jump at all.

The narrator's opinion of Simon Wheeler and his story is that both the old man and the story are extremely boring. This is made clear at the beginning, when the narrator writes,

I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

To reaffirm its boring nature, the narrator later calls Wheeler's story a "monotonous narrative" and an "interminable narrative," which means that it never seems to end. He also calls it a "queer yarn" and says that Wheeler is "exquisitely absurd" for taking it so seriously, but he never really says for sure whether he believes it or not. In the end, the narrator makes a hasty departure because he can't stand the thought of being bored again by another of Wheeler's stories about Jim Smiley.

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From his comments, we can infer much about what the narrator thinks of Simon Wheeler. For one, the narrator doesn't think much about Wheeler's tendency to engage in tedious monologues. In the text, the narrator describes Wheeler as "good-natured" but "garrulous."

Upon initial contact, the narrator thinks that Simon Wheeler looks like a harmless old man. He describes Wheeler as "fat and bald-headed," with "an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance." Here, the narrator is saying that Wheeler's demeanor betrays little of the old man's character.

When the narrator asks Simon Wheeler about Leonidas W. Smiley, however, he gets the surprise of his life. Wheeler immediately springs to life. The older man backs the narrator into a corner and uses a chair to cut off his exit. Then, he proceeds to regale the narrator with a "monotonous narrative." The narrator is discomfited by Wheeler's actions and method of storytelling. He claims that Wheeler does not show any enthusiasm during his monologue. The narrator also finds Wheeler's earnest attitude slightly off-putting, and he especially detests the latter's lack of humor.

Later in the story, the narrator makes a hurried exit before Wheeler launches into a story about Leonidas W. Smiley's "yeller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail." It's quite clear that the narrator does not find Simon Wheeler a very likable individual.

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The framework narrator has this to say about Simon Wheeler and his story:

...if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded.

From his tone, you can tell that his opinion is not high. Terms like "infamous" are sarcastic, letting us know that he is only infamous to Wheeler. When he says flat out "he would go to work and bore me to death," this indicates just how badly directed he finds Wheeler's energies. The man bores him so profoundly it seems like he's working at it! He seems like a waste of time, and a painful one.

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Why does the narrator contact Simon Wheeler?

Mark Twain sets up "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" as a frame story or frame narrative: a story within a story where the outside story sets the stage for the inner, or main, story.  In the case of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog," the narrator learns the inner story of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog from Simon Wheeler, described as "fat and bald-headed, and [with] an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance."  The narrator is visiting the mining camp of Angel's in the Western United States, and before visiting, he is told by a friend that he should seek out this Simon Wheeler and ask about the Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley.  When the narrator asks Simon Wheeler about this reverend, Wheeler instead tells the narrator the story of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog.  The narrator says about Wheeler:

he backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair -- and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm -- but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse.

Basically, the narrator is trapped into hearing this story for its duration.  The only way he escapes is when Wheeler is distracted at the end by someone calling his name.  The narrator then knows that he has been tricked by his friend back East into listening to this story, perhaps the same story that his friend had to sit through when he originally encountered Wheeler.  This frame sets up the humor that is found in the inner story of the jumping frog and all the other curious animals that Jim Smiley bets on.

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