In Samuel L. Clemens' short story entitled, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", he reveals to us that he believes that everyone is susceptible to gullibility. Using not only humor and characters in the story, Clemens actually makes his point by drawing the reader into the story as unwitting victims as well. The story illuminates gullibility on three separate levels. First, the main character of the story within the story, Jim Smiley, is a victim to his own misguided ways. Then, the narrator of the story is shown to be gullible as well. Finally, the reader of the story realizes that they have also been somewhat duped by the whole experience. This theme of Clemens' story is an interesting one in that it is unique, but it also is successful on multiple levels.
The first person whose gullibility is revealed in the story is Jim Smiley. The narrator is told by a friend in a letter to go to Simon Wheeler, the narrator of Smiley's story, and ask about a friend if his named Leonidas W. Smiley. Wheeler says that he does not know anyone by that name, but instead knows a man by the name of Jim Smiley. He goes on to talk about this odd Mr. Smiley. He discusses the fact that Smiley could never resist either side of any bet, and he almost never lost. Wheeler goes into a story about a fighting hound that Smiley used to own named Andrew Jackson. The dog is described as appearing somewhat worthless but being extremely effective in fights. Andrew Jackson's technique was to grab on to a hind leg of the other dog and grip tightly until the other dog surrendered. Smiley once put the dog in a fight against another dog without any hind legs. Andrew Jackson was confounded by this and ended up being badly injured and dying as a result of the fight. Being gullible means being easily cheated. For Smiley to put his dog against another without hind legs was him being gullible. Unless Andrew Jackson completely changed his tactics, there was no way he would win the fight. This event is just a precursor to the gullibility that Smiley exhibits when he challenges a stranger to a frog jumping contest. The stranger says that he would put up any frog against Smiley's frog, Dan'l Webster, but that he just does not have one.
In life, many people strive to find a person that is reliable and to separate the people that are unreliable. Unreliable can be defined as an adjective meaning not dependable. Having read through the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King, it is reasonable to conclude that each of these stories has its own unreliable narrator. The most unreliable narrator, however, is the narrator/killer Springheel Jack from “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King due to the narrator’s cognition problems and the violent nature of the murders.
Perhaps the most dangerous example of trusting your perception lies in the character of Thénardier a thief and con-man. He is a man who will change your perception of him to get what he wants. In the book he did this to a Monsieur Fabantou who was really Jean Valjean, while he was under the name of Jondrette. In preparing for Fabantou He then tells Jean “I owe four quarters, a year! That is 60 Francs,” (page 180). In this case quarters means the rent for his family’s apartment. Another character Marius, who is watching the affair from his apartment next door, knows the truth. “Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have made but forty franks and he could not have owed four since it was not six months since Marius had paid for two,”(180). Fabantou perceiving that Thénardier was in need of money gave it to him. This would cost him as this, as seen demonstrated, was false. Even worse, now knowing that Fabantou had money Thénardier would threaten him with several men and a knife. If Fabantou had been more alert ...
Ever since the day the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was introduced to the readers, the critical world has been littered with numerous essays and theses on Mark Twain’s writing achievement, yet many of them are about the writing style of Bildungsroman, the symbolic meanings of the raft and Mississippi river, the morality and racism color. Whereas few of them ever talked about why Mark Twain wrote so many lies in this novel. Probably because people usually thought that the splendor of this masterpiece will be obscured by the immorality nature of lying. But actually this is no the thing, even Mark Twain himself does’t think lying is an immoral thing. As what he said in his lecture on a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, the essay later published as “On The Decay of the Art of Lying” , he called the art of lying “a Virtue, a Principle...a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal” (Twain, “On The Decay of the Art of Lying”). We can see that Mark Twain has a mature understanding about the value of lying and he wanted to share with us his philosophy of lying through Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Therefore, the major task of the paper is to investigate this philosophy of lying in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a main target of satire is the romantic view of life. Though the characters and symbols, it is evident that the idyllic views are being disparaged. Some of the people in this book are simply deluded, while others cause major tribulations during their lives. Literary romanticism can be pleasant, but it is not real and can confuse those not sage enough to distinguish the difference between a writer's fantasy and their reality. For a person who sees the delusions that humans allow themselves, this can be aggravating. The annoyance caused is not the problem, however. It is the harm caused. The romantic problems brought to light in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show how desperate mankind is to escape from its problems rather than face their reality.
Twain’s attitude changes from the first half of the story to the last half since it is many years later. But, years later, when he thinks about how much pride he had in his successful crime, he cannot relieve himself of guilt. In fact, he can’t even convince his own mother that he lied. “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” (6). He built his heroism on a lie and now that he tries to tell the truth to his mother, she won’t believe that he lied. After all, they say that people believe what they want to believe, even in the face of truth. Twain, as a teenager, participated in Simmons’s show for the attention, and thirty-five years later his guilty conscience continues to haunt him. But, it wasn’t only his wrongdoing, the townspeople and Simmons are all to blame.
According to a criticism on the short story in the second volume of Short Stories for Students, writers of local color attempt to exaggerate cultural differences (Schmidt 27). The genre of writing generally focuses on unsophisticated characters in a specific part of America (Schmidt 27). In Twain’s short story, the narrator travels from eastern American to a western mining town in search of Leonidas W. Smiley. When he is trying to obtain information about the man he is searching for, he encounters Simon Wheeler, the stereotypical western frontiersman who rambles on about a man named Jim Smiley that had a pet frog who could jump higher than any of the other member of his
Smiley would most likely be the character to be targeted due to all the his perseverance in training a frog, Dan’l, whom he bets on. Smiley catched a frog one day and “never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump.” This proves that the three long months Smiley spent in training a frog portrays how determined and committed he is. Not to mention, the moment in which he stumbled upon a stranger; Smiley told the stranger that he bets that his frog could jump higher than any frog in Calaveras County. However, the stranger does not have a frog, so Smiley goes and catches one for him. Unfortunately, as Smiley went to go catch him a frog, “[the stranger] set there a good while thinking and thinking to himself,
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.
“Many a true word is spoken in jest”(Phrases 1), according to author Geoffrey Chaucer. Individuals will resort to indirect actions to prove certain unorthodox beliefs compared to the majority's opinion. In the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, despite the refute of motives or morals in the notice, Twain established hidden motives nonconforming to the majority’s belief. Twain uses these hidden motives to assert the immoral aspects present in his time and still continuing today. Even though the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn goes against morals by promoting lying, this novel contains motives concerning the righteousness of slavery and the ignorance of the community.
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are many forms of satire that are used. One form of satire that I realized was a constant show up, was fraud. Fraud means wrongful or criminal deception intended to help someone's needs.m
The short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain is a short story about a man named Simon Wheeler who tells Twain stories about a man named Jim Smiley. Jim Smiley is most likely a fictional man who is in love with gambling and placing bets on things. Whether the bet is smart or not, Smiley confidently bets on whatever he can and wins quite often. In the main passage of the story, Wheeler tells Twain about the time Jim Smiley bet on a frog that could apparently jump higher than any other frog. This passage contains a lot of implausible actions and characterizations that Wheeler confidently tells of.
In Mark Twain’s book, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” there is a very common theme throughout the book and that is deception. In the book there are multiple instances of people, families, or even whole towns that are not quite what they seem. Over time Huck’s view on many things are shifted, whether the view was of strangers or of high class people he learns that everyone is trying to decieve you one way or another.
“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” – Voltaire. In other words, people will believe what they want no matter what. This type of thing, or self-delusion, is a central theme in both Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” and John Cheever’s “Swimmer.” Though both stories are seemingly about completely different things, they both hinge on the idea that when things are tough, one will believe what they need to get through it.
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”,
An enigmatic person strolls into a humble village secluded in the mountains, ignorant to many things. The enigma then enlightens the villagers to the truth whether good or bad. Mark Twain uses such a scenario in many of his works such as The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, and The Mysterious Stranger. In both stories are set in small towns who's residents are oblivious to their own moral hypocrisy. The sudden appearance of a stranger spreading a sort of knowledge, initiates a chain of events the leads to certain residents to self-evaluate their own character and that of the whole human race. It's is through these "Mysterious Strangers" and the events they trigger that Twain is able to depict his unfiltered cynical view of the moral status of the damned" human race.