Editor's Choice
Why does Twain use Wheeler, not the narrator, to relay Jim Smiley's story in "Jumping Frog"?
Quick answer:
Twain uses Wheeler instead of the narrator to tell Jim Smiley's story to immerse readers in the setting of a Western tavern, enhancing the absurdity and humor of the tale. This approach allows Twain to exploit the intrigue of the American West for Eastern readers, offering an outsider's perspective. Wheeler adds "local color" and authenticity through dialect and regional details, which the nondescript narrator, serving as an objective observer, could not provide.
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 ridiculous, so utterly absurd, it can't really be told by the narrator. An unreliable narrator's one thing; but a narrator who can't be taken at all seriously is quite another.
Also, in using the narrator as a framing device, Twain is giving the reader a glimpse into a completely different world. The West has long exerted an irresistible fascination on the American imagination, and Twain seeks to exploit it for all it's worth. Most of his readers will have been Eastern city dwellers, eager to be regaled with all the minute details of Western life and folklore. But this has to come from someone with whom the reader can identify, someone like them who can provide a way into a fascinating, but still largely alien, culture.
Twain's story is a frame structure--a story within a story--and it fits well with Twain's style of writing which often includes an outsider's or traveler's point of view. His collection Innocents Abroad maintains the same theme of a supposed objective observer describing what he sees and whom he meets.
Most likely, Twain created Wheeler's character to add "local color" to his tale. Twain as a American Regionalist writer relied heavily on dialect and curious traditions of small towns and outposts to add humor and satire to his works--in this story Wheeler provides both elements. The narrator is a rather nondescript character who would not be able to provide background information on Calaveras County or "local color." In this tale, he is the objective traveller who allows Twain to give his readers brief glimpses into a variety of eccentric "Western" towns and customs.
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