In “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” an unnamed narrator tracks down a man named Simon Wheeler in a tavern in a small mining town in California called Angel’s Camp. While speaking with the stranger, Smiley bet him 40 dollars that Webster could out-jump any frog in Calaveras County. • Back in the present, when someone calls Wheeler’s name and interrupts his story, the narrator takes the opportunity to slip away; just as he reaches the door, Wheeler intercepts him and launches into another rambling tale about Jim Smiley’s “yaller one-eyed” cow that had a stump for a tail. Much to Smiley’s dismay, Dan’l Webster won’t jump, and the stranger wins the bet. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. When Smiley returns with another frog for the stranger, the two men place their bets and encourage their frogs to jump. This practice, combined with the horse’s dreadful appearance, causes many people to bet against her, consequently winning Smiley more money. Finding Simon at an old mining camp, the narrator asks him if he knows anything about Leonidas; Simon appears not to, and instead tells a story about Jim Smiley, a man who had visited the camp years earlier. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was a huge success when it was published on November 18, 1865 in the New York Saturday Press.It established Twain’s reputation as a humorist with a great ear for regional American dialects. The narrator is in town to interview a … Struggling with distance learning? From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Smiley had spent the last three months training his frog, Dan’l Webster, how to jump high, and was thus eager to bet on the frog’s jumping abilities. Smiley also owns a bulldog puppy named Andrew Jackson, who, like the mare, doesn’t look like he would be able to win a competition. Teachers and parents! Your IP: 51.75.19.98 The story is set in a mining camp during the gold rush in California, and its subject is a bet, on a frog, gone awry. The shot weighs Webster down so that he can’t jump. The narrator has been advised by his friend in the East to seek out Wheeler in order to ask him about a man named Leonidas W. Smiley. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. The narrator begins to think that his friend tricked him into sitting through a long, rambling story. However, instead of telling him about Leonidas, Wheeler launches into a “monotonous” story about a different but similarly named man called Jim Smiley. Smiley owns many feeble-looking animals and trains them to be fierce fighters and racers. The narrator visits Simon Wheeler in a tavern in Angels Camp, Calaveras County, California, a gold rush mining town. • He promptly flees the town with Smiley’s 40 dollars. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was hailed as Twain’s first great literary success and brought him international recognition. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. The narrator is sent by a friend to interview an old man, Simon Wheeler, who might know the location of an old acquaintance named Leonidas W. Smiley. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”, LitCharts uses cookies to personalize our services. Our, “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. For instance, he trains his sickly looking mare to hold back in races and save all her energy for the final stretch so that she can barely win the race as an unexpected champion. He heard the story of the jumping frog while he was in the Angel’s Hotel at Angel’s Camp, California while he was working as a miner. Certainly the tale is moderately amusing, but it seemed to catch the imagination of the American reader, and Twain was to follow it up with equally artful stories and lecture tours which were to make him well known some time before the artistic success of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. LitCharts Teacher Editions.

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