Mark Twain – The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County

The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County was a lot like other things that Mark Twain has wrote. I have not read a lot of books or stories by Mark Twain, but from the ones that I do remember, it always seems like Mark Twain has a difficult way of writing. The dialect in his writings just always confusing to me, and I always struggle to keep along. Mark Twain says things like "cal'klated' (Twain). I mean what is that? I am just not a fan of reading things that I can not really follow along well with, but Mark Twain is a great author and one that has affected a lot of literature today. Mark Twain, as we see in this short story and others from him, has a great imagination and makes the reader feel like they are right there following along with the characters. I thought it was kind of funny how our blogs went from talking about sad people, to crazy people, and now to jumping frogs. Personally I am a fan of the jumping frogs, because it is kind of nice to take a break from all of that crazy stuff that we have been reading.

The time period that Mark Twain wrote about was a totally different one from what we live in now. We think that we have to have all of the materials in the world to entertain us and to make us happy, but that was not the case for this short story. The characters in this book were happy with what they had and did not need expensive toys to make them happy. As you can read this short story you could see that they were happy and very entertained with a jumping frog. "He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump" (Twain 500). They could just sit, play, and watch their frogs.

I think that i notice realism the most from The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calevera. Mark Twain was depicting life the way it really was, and sharing with people what they really did and what made them happy, even if it was a silly old jumping frog. "So he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump" (Twain 500). Like I said earlier, I always remember Mark Twain as one who had a great imagination. I think he was really trying to use his imagination a lot in this story. I think he was sick of all the things that were going on in the wars around him, and he was just ready to hear and write about something that would lift up a few spirits. I think he was honestly trying to distract some people from the crazy things that were going on in that period. He wanted them to read this and be so consumed in the story that they forgot about their worries and troubles for awhile. I think these are perfect examples of realism.

Twain, Mark. "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 498-502. Print.