mark twain & the notorious jumping frog of calaveras county
TRANSCRIPT
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