A presentation on the life, times, and work of Mark Twain as part of an analysis of "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"

1. Mark Twain

2. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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)

7. TRAGEDIES
Bankruptcy in his 50‟s
Deaths:
1st Susy
2nd Olivia
Both of his daughters go insane
3rd Death: Jean

8. 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.

9.  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

11. DEATH
April 22, 1910
 (in and out on the same day as Haley‟s
Comet)

12. 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

13. 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

14. The Notorious Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County

15. 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”

16. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

17. 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)

18. 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”

19. 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.

20. 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)

21. 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

22. 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…

23. MARK TWAIN

24. 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.or
g/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