One of Mark Twain's earliest stories, "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" helped to establish Twain as a one of America's
greatest humorists. This story illustrates Twain's satirical attitude toward
storytelling and the cultural differences between the eastern and western regions of the
United States. Satire is a form of writing that makes use of stereotypes by ridiculing
them through exaggeration, an exaggeration that prevails throughout the story, and is
termed
hyperbole [obvious
exaggeration]
- Simon Wheeler tells
his "interminable narrative" of two
men:
[He] admired its two heroes as men of
transcendent genius in
finesse.
- Wheeler
enumerates all the things that Jim Smiley would bet on anything, saying that
he even bet on Parson Walker's wife who had fallen ill.
One day Smiley walked in and asked how Walker's wife was doing, and the Parson told him
that she was doing better. Nevertheless, Similey says
"Well, I'll risk two-and-one-half" that she don't
anyway."
Smiley
had a mare called a "fifteen-minute nag."
Smiley's frog would "nail a fly
every time as far as he could see him."
metaphor
[unstated comparison]
- He never
changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he turned the
initial sentence - At the door I met the
sociable Wheeler returning and he button-holed
me.
simile
[Stated comparisons using like or
as]
- Jim Smiley had a dog
that he would fight; when this dog fought,
his underjaw'd stick out like the forcastle of a
steamboat....his teeth would...shine savage like the
furnaces.
[Smiley had] a "Yellow one-eyed
cow (hyperbole)...with no tail and only jest a short stump like a
bannanner."
When
speaking of his frog, Smiley says that it is "as solid as a glob of
mud." The frog
readability="11">
scratches his head with his hind foot
as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doing anymore 'n any frog
might do.
Dan'l Webster...hysted up his
shoulders so like
Frenchmen
The frog was whirling in the air
like a doughnut.....turned one summersault or may be a
couple or so and come down flat footed like a
cat.
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