Mark Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a widely known story. I recognized the story from a previous reading course I have taken. Twain does a good job making the story entertaining by incorporating humor into it. He, like many other writers, has a common theme behind his writing, but does a better job keeping interest high. His theme in “Jumping Frog” of course was be careful whom you trust. He left his frog that he bet money on in the hands of his opponent who he did not know. This was foolish and he paid the price for it.
One could even venture to say that Twain’s theme went deeper than that because the whole story was unnecessary information about a man that he was not interested in. He was looking for an entirely different person altogether. This was a good chance for him to put more humor in but also gave him the opportunity to add some local color to the story, which he had been known to do. By showing that the people in that area of the world are capable of talking your head off about something you did know want to know about, Twain was describing the people there according to his perspective.
In both his stories that we read in class, Twain told of tails that the normal reader is not used to hearing. With a combination of humor and wit Twain ventures into a story land were no one person dared to go during his life time. In this story Twain once again displays the same color in all his stories with a tall tale of something that could never happen.
ReplyDeleteI too looked for a deeper meaning in this story and find a moral message well hidden, in my own opinion. Maybe Twain is trying to show the reader that there are wicked people out there that prey on others that are hard workers. They in turn still just rewards from those who are most deserving but in the end these evil people have to suffer at the hands of karma.
I think that Mark Twain told "The Notorious Jumping Frog" with great humor. I agree with Jones on how Twain uses local color. I noticed it by the way the words were spelled to recreate the language of the story at hand. And the comment made about Mark Twain keeping interest high was a correct statement to make. I never once got bored reading the stories needing to be read. I think that Jones and Moss were both right with their remarks about Twain telling his stories like his readers had never imagined. But I can also see the deeper meaning Cadet Moss was referring to about karma.
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