My comment about “ the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras county ”
After reading the short story written by mark twain, I have some thoughts about this short story. And I want to write my comment from the following aspects.
Firstly, referring to the “jumping frog of Calaveras county” , I want to write something about the writer—mark twain. As we all know, Twain’s humor is remarkable, most of his works tend to be funny, including this short story. However, his humor is not only of witty remarks mocking at small things making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism. And this “jumping frog” is just using some humorous words to reflect something about the life of the United States and still-developing West.
Then, I want to write something about the details of this story. This story tells about a gambler who spend his most of his life addicting into gambling. Everything in his eyes can become the very thing he bet on, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, any way just as long as he got a bet, he was satisfied. As for bet with people, he specially trained a frog , and one day , when he went out with his frog , he met a stranger, he want to bet with that stranger as usual, when he went to find another frog for betting, the stranger got Simley’s frog out and open his mouth and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail-shot. And of course, Smiley’s frog can’t jump up with the heavy quail-shot, and Smiley failed. This story is mainly about the life of Smiley and his frog, according to describe Smiley’s life, we can see the life of all people at that time, they wandered everywhere, having nothing to do all the day, from this short story, reflecting the condition of American at that time.
Also, in my view, this short story’s structure is creative. Twain has devised a story-within-a-story framing structure by making his narrator the reluctant audience for his storyteller,Simon Wheel, and by distinguishing his storyteller from his protagonist, Jim Smiley. Such a structure contributes to the comic effect of the story. When the narrator went to inquire Simon Wheel, as soon as the narrator referred to Simley, he can’t speak talking. From Simon Wheel , I think the writer also want to reflect something about that time. Because of the condition of that time, most of people had nothing to do, they complain about the life, but having no way and no place to pour out their complains, so Twain shaped this character of Simon Wheel to imply that people’s complains about the life.
In this short story，Twain used many wrong words on purpose，for example，he wrote “himself”as “hisself”，he wrote “banana”as “bannanner”. In this way, can he show that he didn’t accepted well education and shorten the distance between the author and the readers. Also, we can see that Mark Twain is the real master of the humor.