Essay On The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County

English Long Test The literary texts from the Era of Expansion, namely The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain and The Baron of Grogzwig by Charles Dickens have evoked a humorous response from the audience and the readers. They had used various literary techniques to achieve and to get these kind of responses. In Twain’s story, one of the literary texts he used was symbolism, the usage of famous political personalities such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster as animals in the story is one of the examples in the story. However, Twain may have implied another reason to use these names. He might have wanted to mock the political system by, for example naming the bulldog Andrew Jackson maybe to tell something not good …show more content…
American humor, based on the story mostly has a positive vibe throughout the story. As depicted in the story, you wouldn’t see any undesirable thing happening in the story. The story circled over Simon Wheeler telling a story about the gambling addict Jim Smiley, he was described as a person who loved to do bets and, well he always win in everything except for the frog bet. He was cheated, however he didn’t have any grudge about the person. He stayed positive and you wouldn’t see anything bad going on there. The humor in this particular story, is that it is so much ironic. Jim Smiley who is a professional gambler just lost to a stranger because he was cheated. He was cheated because of his unwariness and stupidity. Another is that, the persona in the story or the narrator wanted to get some information about this fellow named Leonidas Smiley, but instead he listened to a very long background story of a man he had no interest on, Jim Smiley. American humor also is about using symbolism. Comparing famous personalities to insignificant and not-so-important things. Comparing political people to animals in the story that is described as not-so-well characters in the story. American humor also tries to ridicule two sides, the East and the West. In the story, the persona or the narrator comes from the East and Simon Wheeler comes from the West. It is depicted that the people of the East are …show more content…
It is somewhat hard to locate the subject of death in Mark Twain’s literary text because there weren’t really any death mentioned in the story. Concluding from what was stated in the literary text, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, there was the death of the pride of Jim Smiley, the death of his gambling addiction. After working so hard to “educate” the frog, to teach him to jump and however, he was cheated by a stranger, and I think, for me, this certain event, Jim Smiley lost his pride and somehow his gambling addiction has been lessened because of this. Also, there was the death of the hope of winning another bet. In Charles Dickens’s story The Baron of Grogzwig, he explored a lot of themes of death in the story. First was financial death wherein the family had a lot of debts that led to the misery of the baron. Physical death, where the baron tried to kill himself by cutting his neck with a knife, this wasn’t continued however when he met the genius and the baron looked at the bright side of life. There also was the death of death, the death here is pertaining to the Genius of Despair and Suicide, and he disappeared because he cannot tolerate sounds of laughter and happiness. And last but not the least, the death of the negative things. After meeting the genius, he then changed his view of life, instead of looking in the bad side, he turned to view the bright things in life. Noticing the beauty of