Authors use stylistic techniques to bring clarity to their text and create a vivid picture for their readers. “Cannibalism in the Cars,” a story by Mark Twain, is about politicians who get snowed in on a train together and resort to cannibalism in the end. In another story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” the narrator is listens to a man who explains Jim Smiley, who gambles and tells a tale about a jumping frog. In “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “Cannibalism in the Cars,” Mark Twain uses characterization, irony, and imagery in order to engage the reader while also making the story clear to his audience, in this sense teaching them a theme.
Twain utilizes the stylistic technique of characterization in order to convey his themes
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Jim Smiley is the topic of discussion in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and he is a very arrogant man. In the beginning of the story, Twain writes, “I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county” (Twain, “Celebrated”). The fact that the Smiley is willing to spend $40, which in the mid 1800’s is a large amount of money, portrays that Smiley is highly confident that his frog will win. In a turn of events however, Smiley loses the bet, which shows readers his false sense of judgement. The way Twain chooses to portray his characters allows the story come to life. Strong characterization is shown in Twain's other piece, “Cannibalism in the Cars,” as well. The narrator states, “I was conversing with a man who was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and
With Twain’s style of complexity in characterization and sophisticated narrative structure, Mark Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was one of the best works that he had ever written. Mark Twain’s, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is about a man by the name of Jim Smiley was a man who would bet on anything. Smiley made a frog his pet and bets a stranger that his frog, Dan’l Webster, could jump higher than any frog. When Smiley was distracted, the stranger filled Dan’l Webster with lead, resulting in Smiley losing the bet. Before Smiley could figure out what just happened, the stranger vanished along with the money he won by cheating. In “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”,
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
The first literary device is a simile and it paints a picture in the readers head.
The writer has used a combination of narrative and descriptive styles of writing. He has used the descriptive style to give a step by step illustration on what a man should do, how he should behave and lastly what he should say from the beginning to the end of the story (Meyer 45). The narrative style comes into play as he adds in his characters, the conflicts they will face or words they will use and the settings and or challenges they will encounter throughout the short story. This
An author’s style of words, sentence structure, and use of figurative language gives an author their own unique style of writing. Although, how an author writes can cause confusion due to connotative use of words and sentence. The author’s style-words, sentence structure, and figurative language can give a reader a description that forms imagery. Also it affects the tone, mood, and theme of the story.
In the story, “The Killing Game”, Joy Williams, uses several diffenent types of writing skills to presuade the reader to see her views.
Mark Twain quickly rose to fame after the release of his story, “Jim Smiley and the Jumping Frog,” and he continued to make a name for himself through the release of stories such as The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Twain saw immense success and fame; he was easily recognizable and wildly popular, even to the point of being called “the greatest American humorist of his age” by the New York Times. In short, Twain was as close to being an international sensation as one could hope for in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, it wasn’t until the later days of his writing career that Twain became so well known. As photography was expensive and hard to come by, caricatures were the method of choice to portray celebrities. And, as
One of The Pigman’s techniques that the author put into the story is figurative language.
I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things – a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in whi...
First, Mark Twain uses educated diction and obscure descriptions of Simon Wheeler in an attempt to entertain the general public reading the newspaper “The Saturday,” the newspaper where Mark Twain published his original version of his short story. To begin, Mark Twain uses the character of Jim Smiley to interest the reader and keep them hooked at the obscure personality of Mr. Smiley and his frog. Jim Smiley, a man addicted to gambling and competition, fools others through deception and false manipulations and gains the reader’s attention through his dedication to win and compete. Through clever manipulation of words, Jim downplays the skill of his...
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
In the story, "Cannibalism in the Cars", by Mark twain, he is able to prosperously create a humorous effect and utilize various devices to do so. The way he manipulates pauses in his stories to create a surprising affect, the importance of using parenthesis to assist the comic, and being able to conceal that the story that is about to be told is humorous. The passage also written by Mark Twain, "How to Tell a Story", further supports the devices being practiced.
In the short story “Magpies” by Thomas King, a unique narrator is used to recount the story of the character Granny’s death and the subsequent conflict involving her burial between Ambrose and Wilma. In his story, King intertwines written and oral literature, and creates an oral voice through a narrator. There are many techniques that King uses to achieve this effect. King’s writing style which is used in “Magpies” is best described by King himself in his essay “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonialism”. He describes this style of narration as “interfusional” which is a “metamorphosis- (from) written to oral, reader to speaker” (Godzilla vs Post-Colonialism 14). Through using the role of a storyteller, King uses the “interfusional” style of writing. The
Mark Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a short story with the lesson that what goes around comes around. In this short story, which first appeared in 1856 and his first successful story, Twain uses local customs of the time, dialect, and examples of social status in his story to create a realistic view of the region in which the story takes place. The way that the characters behave is very distinctive. Dialect is also used to give the reader a convincing impression of the setting in “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. The social status of the main characters in this story also was something that Twain took into account in writing this story. Mark Twain is a realist who concentrates on the customs, dialect, and social status of specific regions of the country.
“The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County” is a short story by Mark Twain that deals with deception and cleverness. This story is a first person account of an incident in which the (nameless) narrator was tricked by a friend of his into listening to a lengthy story told by the monotonous and lethargic Simon Wheeler. Ironically, the story Wheeler tells regarding the “celebrated jumping frog” is about a man named Jim Smiley who, like the narrator, is beguiled and deceived by another individual. In Wheeler’s story, Jim Smiley practices a certain level of deception and trickery on a regular basis and ends up having the tables turned on him. This story suggests that trickery and deceit will eventually catch up with you.