"The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County"

Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County" is a good example of Regionalism. As mentioned earlier in this blog, Mark Twain was a key author of the Regionalism movement. A pioneer of his field, if you will. He was one of the first authors to start writing in the local dialect. For Twain, his dialect was a lazy Southern drawl, and it shows in "The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County". there are many examples of the local dialect, such as when Simon Wheeler talks about how Smiley "learned" a from to jump (Twain 501). People do not say that anymore- they say taught. Also in the lines, "There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley in th winter of '49 - or may be it was the spring of '50 - I don't recollect exactly..." (Twain 499) This local dialect is used so much as to become a nuciance. This was a common occurence in Regionalism. "The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County" reads much like other works by Twain such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. My favorite local saying used in this story was when Smiley realized his frog has been stuffed with metal and he says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" (Twain 502). Why anyone would want to blame their cats in such a situation is beyond me, but I found the bit of local color quite amusing. It was the same case with the word "bananner" (Twain 502). Also, the use of a steamboat simile to describe a dog helps establish where this story takes place.

This story is also a work of Realism because it depicts events that could plausibly happen in real life. I remember having frog-jumping contests every Fourth of July. It is not that much of a stretch to imagine a man teaching a frog to jump, particularly if that man had a gambling problem. Jim Smiley himself was the ideal Realism hero. He was an ordinary many who lived in small town America. He liked to gamble more than the average man, but small town life does that to a person.

Government and religion are also missing from this story as well. It seems that these were not very important in Realism works. The American dream is also shuffled to the background. Nature is described only in the barest sense to establish where the events of the story are taking place. Human nature is evident in the man from the city's actions. The man cheats on their bet because he wants to win. It is within human nature to want to win all the time, this man just take it one step further to show us a darker side of his nature. There is not enough of this to make "The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County" at Naturalism work, though. The lack of a dire situation also makes certain that this story is not a Naturalism work. It is, however, a Realism and Regionalism work, as explained above.

Twain, Mark. "The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Colombus: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 498-502. Print.