Previous

By employing a story-within-a-story framework, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” brings two different points of view into the tale, each of which creates context for the story’s events and enriches the tone. Mark Twain’s primary intention in writing the story is to entertain, and the use of multiple points of view contribute to its humor and whimsy. To begin with, the narrator’s explanation in the opening passage for how he came to visit with Simon Wheeler is absurd. The narrator calls upon Simon Wheeler to check in on a friend’s friend named Smiley, who probably doesn’t exist, and winds up listening for hours to stories about an entirely different Smiley, to no avail. Yet, the futility and absurdity of the narrator’s experience is only funny because of the narrator’s point of view. A more cantankerous person might cut Simon Wheeler off right away and leave, but this narrator patiently rides it out and offers a dry-witted perspective about Wheeler’s self-seriousness. Similarly, it is Simon Wheeler’s point of view that helps to make the anecdotes about Jim Smiley funny. 

In less-capable hands, Smiley’s exploits might be presented as what they actually are: the efforts of a huckster and degenerate gambler to trick people into losing their money. But Wheeler’s perspective casts a different light on the anecdotes about Smiley and thus contextualizes them differently. For Wheeler, Smiley is a genius and a hero who accomplishes remarkable feats. Wheeler’s admiring perspective is all at once poignant and hilarious and thereby enriches the tone of the story. The end, when Wheeler is interrupted and the point of view switches back to the narrator, further contextualizes the story and lands one last joke: that the whole encounter has been a futile though thoroughly entertaining waste of time.

Previous section Motifs

Take a Study Break