25 pages • 50 minutes read
Mark TwainThe Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1865A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Animals with Political Names
Two animals prove essential to Smiley’s betting career: a decrepit bulldog named “Andrew Jackson,” after the famous United States president (1767-1845), and a frog named “Dan’l Webster” after the famous orator, attorney, and politician Daniel Webster (1782-1852). Twain’s contemporary readers would have immediately recognized these references, and although Twain makes no specific thematic comparisons between the animals and the men, these references emphasize Smiley’s silly-yet-savvy nature. Humorously, Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster where political rivals, indicating that the names were chosen by Smiley without any particular political consideration. Instead, Twain allows Smiley to symbolically reconcile America’s regional and political divide for the purpose of increasing his own wealth.
Smiley’s Bets
The motif of Smiley’s increasingly ridiculous bets form a running joke throughout the story and contextualize his significant losses with Andrew Jackson and Dan’l Webster. Often, Smiley’s bets feature animals. According to Simon Wheeler, Jim Smiley would bet on anything and possessed “rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things” (Paragraph 7). This long list of creatures, plus a horse so slow that she was known locally as “the fifteen-minute nag” (Paragraph 5), emphasize the rural setting of the story and Smiley’s willingness to eschew social norms. By the end of the story, when Simon attempts to begin another story about a “yaller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no tail” (Paragraph 24), the introduction of yet another fantastic animal lands as a punchline. The Narrator simply cannot bear to hear about yet another animal friend of Smiley’s, and Simon seemingly has an inexhaustible number of examples.
The Stranger
A stranger visits Angel’s Camp and accepts a bet with Jim Smiley on the results of a frog-jumping contest. When Smiley isn’t looking, the stranger cheats by weighing down Smiley’s frog with quail shot; he wins the bet and skedaddles before Smiley can realize he’s been had. The stranger symbolizes the author’s own joke on the reader, who discovers, too late, that the entire story is a ruse to keep the reader on the hook. The Stranger also embodies the irony that defines Twain’s humor throughout the story. The Stranger outwits Smiley in exactly the way Smiley outwits his own opponents; Smiley underestimates the Stranger just as the Narrator underestimates Simon Wheeler and his friend.
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By Mark Twain
