Comparing The Notorious Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County And Young Goodman Brown

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Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain lived in completely different times, yet the stories they wrote both tell of the human condition in such a true way the characters in them are as familiar as pedestrians walking on the sidewalk. Two stories by them in particular accentuate a good cha racter. Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown and Mark Twain's the Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Young Goodman Brown is a gothic story about a man, and the town with him, that allows curiosity to lead him astray, while the Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is about a compulsive gambler. Readers who haven't ever heard of these authors are familiar with these type of characte rs. They are real enough to cause nostalgia in the stomachs of the most …show more content…

Comparing these two stor ies expresses how authors of different eras and cultures create characters as genuine and life-like as reality. Both characters are compu lsive,and they both deal with change. These are aspects of human nature that spa n through millennia, relatable and true to the American experience .

Mark Twain creates dialects in his writing similar to yokels of 191 century Missouri. The dialects make a mockery of proper English that would aggravate a grammar teacher to no end. Yet, people living in the country, with no education, really talk this way. For exam ple,in the Notorious Jumping Frog, the character Wheeler talks so unnaturally it is difficult to understand him. "Well,thish-yer Smiley had …show more content…

His short stories were always more lighthearted than Hawthorne's, but his characters were just as real. Smiley, for instance, in the Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is a gambler. "He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you." (1241). Smiley is a short-sighted thrill seeker. He is a type of individual one can see at Las Vegas, Nevada wasting all his savings at the craps table. The newspapers these days are filled with stories about dopes who lost their life earnings in Sin City. Smiley would fit right in today's soc

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