Mark Twain & The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Mark Twain

CHILDHOOD

SAMUEL CLEMENS

Born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Monroe

County, Missouri

Shortly afterwards moved to Hannibal,

Missouri (right beside the Mississippi River)

Experiences of his childhood such as his

friendships, his family‟s slaves, and even the

river itself would influence his writings

END OF CHILDHOOD…

At age 11, his father died

Began working as an apprentice for a printer

Wandered through his early adulthood

Worked as a steamboat pilot, Civil War

volunteer, miner, reporter…. Ect.

Takes on the pseudonym “Mark Twain”,

which means 4 yards deep and indicates that

the water level is safe for passage

FAME Start= 1865, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping

Frog”

Cruise letters= Innocents Abroad, used

America as the standard of travel

Won the love of Americans

FAMILY AND HAPPY TIMES

Marries Olivia Langdon

4 children: Langdon, Susy, Clara, and Jean

(Langdon died before age 2)

Writes some of his most famous books:

The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom

Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

The Prince and the Pauper

Becomes wealthy through revenues and jobs

(Big House in Connecticut)

TRAGEDIES

Bankruptcy in his 50‟s

Deaths:

1st Susy

2nd Olivia

Both of his daughters go insane

3rd Death: Jean

There is nothing…. no God

and no universe; there is

only empty space, and in it

a lost and homeless and

wandering and

companionless and

indestructible Thought.

Because of his personal tragedies, his later

works are much more pessimistic...

Works such as “To the Person Sitting in the

Darkness”, “King Leopold‟s Soliloquy” and

(what you read) “The War Prayer”

The tone is much darker and has a sense of

anger and hopelessness

To cope, he began wearing white suits (he

had 14) and scarlet socks and being much

more public

DEATH

April 22, 1910 (in and out on the same day as Haley‟s

Comet)

HISTORY OF THE STORY

Clemens visited Sierra Mnts 1864-65;

stopping at Angels Camp in Calaveras

County, CA

Met Ben Coons in a mining bar

Coons told the story to Clemens who

doctored it for publication for his friend

Artemus Ward

Publish in New York Saturday Press

SUMMARY

Basic set up: the narrator, Simon Wheeler

Setting: mining camp bar

Story: Wheelers memories about Jim Smiley

and his gambling craze and animals

Conflict: a contest between the jumping frogs

of Jim and a stranger, the stranger rigs the

contest by putting two bullets in Jim‟s frog‟s

mouth

The Notorious Jumping Frog

of Calaveras County

HISTORICAL SETTING

Gold Rush (1848-1850‟s)

Years of prosperity in America, Gold was

almost ½ of the total gold production in the

world.

Americans dreamed of FREEDOM,

CONQUEST, PROSPERITY, and the

“PROMISED LAND”

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

LITERARY IMPORTANCE

Most successful and well-written of Mark

Twain‟s early works.

With this story, he began to organize and

give purpose to his haphazard humor.

It was “an accomplished masterpiece”

(Wilson 168)

ASPECTS OF STYLE

Clashing opposites and differences (the stranger/Smiley,

Narrator/Wheeler)

Absurd situations (whole story)

Language socially:“monotonous narrative” (224) v. “Thish-

yer Smiley” (225)

Language culturally: “as tedious as it should be useless to

me” (223)

Language politically: “Andrew Jackson” “Dan‟l Webster”

LITERARY INFLUENCES AND DIFFERENCES

Southwestern Humor

Adoption of the theme of “the cultural

„Gentleman‟ among the local country yokels”

(Wilson 168).

Difference:

not a “bragging, confident frontiersman”(Wilson

168)

Mining camp, not “sophisticated humor of

civilization (Baender 192)

The gentleman learns a lesson.

LITERARY INFLUENCES AND DIFFERENCES

California Folklore

Earlier stories of a toad contest throughout

folklore.

Ben Coon‟s = mix into Twain.

Differences

“imprint of individuality… whimsical humor,

verisimilitude, and dramatic power. His frog

sketch is more amusing…it employs humorous

colloquial language” (Cuff 157)

ORIGINALITY

Blended parts together with his own stuff.

“fifteen-minute nag and Andrew Jackson, the dog, probably came from Mark Twain’s experiences as a San Francisco reporter.” Wilson 166

The letter sending him to Simon Wheeler and the search for Leonidas W. Smiley come from letter by Artemus Ward. Wilson 166-67

CONCLUSION

There was still humor

Took disappearing southern humor and western lore to create a story full of fun times and great laughter

For that era, it was a sign of hope for future joy

For us, it captured the culture, language, and history of days now long forgotten.

Set the path for the famous and well-beloved author…

MARK TWAIN

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baender, Paul. “The „Jumping Frog‟ as a Comedian‟s First Virtue.” Modern Philology 60.3 (Feb. 1963): 192-200.

JSTOR. 21 Jan. 2009 <http://www.jstor.org/search>.

Cuff, Robert Penn. “Mark Twain‟s Use of California Folklore in His Jumping Frog Story.” The Journal of American Folklore 65. 256 (Apr.-Jun. 1952): 155-158. JSTOR. 21 Jan. 2009 <http://www.jstor.org/search>.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. Great Britain: Harper Perennial, 1997.

McMichael, James, et al. Anthropology of American Literature. Vol. 2. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc, 2007.

Rogers, Paul C., Jr. “Artemus Ward and Mark Twain‟s „Jumping Frog‟.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 28.3 (Dec. 1973): 273-296. JSTOR. 21 Jan. 2009 <http://jstor.org/search >.

Twain, Mark and Charles Neider. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.

Twain, Mark. The Jumping Frog. New York: Harper &Brothers, 1903.

Walker, I. M. Mart Twain. New York: Humanities Press, 1970.

Ward, Geoffrey C., Dayton Duncan, and Ken Burns. Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Wilson, James D. A Readers Guide to the Short Stories of Mark Twain. Boston, Mass: G. K. Hall & Co, 1987.

Pictures by order of appearance

1.http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/give/historyroom/twain.jpg

2. http://www.ecology.info/img/Mississippi-River.jpg

3. http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MEPOD/10044132~Mark-Twain-American-Writer-Born-Samuel-Langhorne-Clemens-Pictured-in-a-White-Suit-Posters.jpg

4. http://www.hittheroadcalifornia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/frog.jpg

5.http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://whyfiles.org/coolimages/images/csi/gold.jpg&imgrefurl=http://whyfiles.org/coolimages/index.html%253Fid%3D1034716073.html&usg=__A8Ml9gNOfIhXZQXREu65zEuu-KQ=&h=465&w=300&sz=86&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=n1yJ7GkEVfYrQM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=83&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpicture%2Bof%2Bgold%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:*

6. http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/willow/history-of-california0.gif

7. http://www.soldierstudies.org/images/webquest/civil%20war%20soldiers.jpg