Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Tricksters 

Nearly every individual, be it person or animal, in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a trickster, whose characteristics are consistent with the tricksters in the myths and folktales of many cultures. Tricksters in folktales often play the naïf in order to get what they want. Simon Wheeler wants to tell stories to anyone who will listen, so he doesn’t let on he knows nothing about any Leonidas W. Smiley. Instead, he pretends to misunderstand and shares stories about Jim Smiley, and even literally corners and traps the narrator so he can’t leave. Jim Smiley’s animals each engage in this form of tricksterism as well, putting on airs of incompetence or weakness only to reveal themselves as ruthless competitors when the time is right. Of course, Jim Smiley is himself a master trickster, who goes to great lengths to get people to take a bad bet. 

By choosing the most unimpressive creature imaginable in the frog Dan’l Webster to train to be a fierce competitor, Smiley lures people into a bet they are sure to lose. However, despite their prowess, tricksters get their comeuppance from time to time and are made to look the fool, just as Smiley does when yet another trickster comes along and hoodwinks him. Finally, in Twain’s chaotic world where everyone is a trickster, even the narrator is tricked. After all, the entire short story is one big practical joke that the narrator’s unnamed friend has played on him by sending him to visit Simon Wheeler armed with the name “Smiley.”