The Gambling frog

Thomas Dibble
Dr. Martha Griffin
English 1020 C07 1140
October 8, 2013
A Frog’s Gamble “A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation(Mark Twain).” This is the main idea of “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, or more commonly known by his pen name Mark Twain. Just like the quote, the Narrator learns about the character of Jim Smiley through a conversation with an old man named Simon Wheeler. The Narrator had originally gone to see Wheeler to inquire about a friend of a friend named Leonidas W. Smiley. Wheeler replied “ Rev. LeonidasW. H’m, Reverend Le-well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley(Twain 146).” Even Though it was not the man the Narrator was asking about “Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair” then proceeded to reel off the monotonous narrative about the always betting Jim Smiley(Twain 145). Twain was able to accurately illustrate the gambling man Smiley due to the great deal of money that he invested from his writings and lectures and then later lost. Twain was born in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. He was the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. In 1839 when Twain was 4 years old he and his family moved to a nearby town called Hannibal where he spent a majority of his child hood. His childhood home also provided the setting for “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer.” Twain later got an apprenticeship with a printer where he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion’s newspaper the “Hannibal Journal.” Later in 1859 he became a licensed riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. However, his riverboat days were cut short in 1861 due to the outbreak of the Civil War, which stopped most civilian traffic on the river. After that Twain joined a volunteer unit for the Confederate Army on June 1861, but he only served for a couple of weeks because his unit was later disbanded. Twain later became a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in1862, where he adopted the pen name “ Mark Twain” which is steamboat slang for 12 feet of water. Between the years of 1865 and 1894 Twain published "The Notorios Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," “The Adventures of tom Sawyer,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “The Prince and the Pauper.” In February 1870, he improved his social status by marrying 24-year-old Olivia (Livy) Langdon, the daughter of a rich New York coal merchant. Twain had indeed loved his wife for he said, "I have ... the only sweetheart I have ever loved ... she is the best girl, and the sweetest, and gentlest, and the daintiest, and she is the most perfect gem of womankind." In June 1904, Livy died after a long illness, and 6 years later Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut at the age of 74. The setting for Twain’s short story “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” is Angel’s Camp, Which is a gold mining community in the mid-19th century that the narrator of the story visited to locate Simon Wheeler. Just like the old mining towns in many other stories, this one was mainly populated by men looking to strike it rich. This old mining town was pretty run down as the Narrator describes he “found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel’s(Twain 145).” Due to the western location it was more of a frontier town full of loud, outrageous, and uneducated people in comparison to the more sophisticated people from the east. Our Narrator being from the east considered the story being told by Wheeler to be a tall tale, while Wheeler felt that it was “so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story(Twain 146).” Wheeler starts to tell his story about Smiley and his gambling problem. He talked about Smiley’s old mare, who looked so run down and slow “They use to give her two or three hundred yards’ start, and then pass her under way(Twain 147).” Even though she looked rough and was always in the back of the pack during the race, she always got excited when she saw the finishing flag and gathered enough energy to win the race. After that Wheeler talked about smiley’s fighting dog named Andrew Jackson, who always beat every opponent but only when there was money on the table. Finally, last but not least wheeler spoke about Smiley’s frog, Dan’l Webster, that he bet that little Webster could jump higher and faster than any frog in town. Then one day a stranger comes to town and takes his bet, and then cheats and takes his money. Most short story writers from this era, including Twain, did everything for a reason or to symbolize something. This goes to show that the names for the dog and the educated frog were chosen for a reason. Smiley’s dog that didn’t look like much until it was fighting was named possibly after Andrew Jackson the seventh president of the United States and a westerner. Now on the other hand Smiley’s educated frog named Daniel Webster was an attorney that ended serving as a senator and Secretary of State. At the end of Twain story an uneducated common frog beats an educated frog, but only after cheating. The meaning of this is, for it to be possible for the uneducated frog to beat the educated frog (Dan’l Webster) it had to cheat. “But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away(Twain 150).” At the end of the story our Narrator walks away with none of the answers he sought after. All he walked away with is a story about a guy with a similar name that had a horse, a dog, an educated frog, and a gambling problem.