Showing posts with label jay mitchell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jay mitchell. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

the notorius jumping frog of calaveras county

“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain is one of Twain’s earliest examples of humor and exaggeration. From the beginning of the story, one could see that it was filled with humor. Jim Smiley was the man who would bet on anything, but he always seemed to win. He would bet on animals that had absolutely no chance of winning anything, but he still won. He had an old asthmatic horse that he enters into races and the horse always finds a way to win. Smiley also has a dog, Andrew Jackson that would lose every fight until there was money involved. Smiley then got a frog and trained the frog to jump higher than any other frog around. The frog began to win and one day a stranger challenged Smiley and the stranger won. The stranger had secretively given the frog a quail shot to hinder its great jumping abilities. The frog eventually burped the quail shot up and Smiley realized that he had been cheated. He went looking for the stranger, but the stranger was long gone with his money. Mark Twain really uses humor and exaggeration in this story to keep the reader’s attention. The entire story is very interesting and the humor is great.