First of all, in Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County," the story does not see based heavily upon conflict as many stories
often do. If I needed to identify conflicts in the story, the first would be man vs man,
in that Jim Smiley is pitted against other men in gambling: for he is a man who will bet
on anything. (This also might be considered man vs society, as he
bets with everyone in town who will gamble, but man vs man should be
sufficient.)
The story that Wheeler imparts starts off
sounding like a fairy tall—or a "tall tale," which is a story made up of
exaggerations.
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim
Smiley…
As interesting a
character as Smiley turns out to be, Wheeler is himself a very good storyteller. He
continues to paint an interesting and humorous picture of Jim Smiley who is quite the
gambler:
[Smiley] was the curiosest man about always
betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the
other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change
sides.
In the course of the
story, Wheeler introduces various creatures around which Smiley organizes his betting.
Several were: Andrew Jackson, his fighting dog; the "fifteen-minute nag" (a horse); and,
his frog, named "Dan'l." The winning streak that Smiley has enjoyed finally takes a turn
for the worse when he his scammed by a conman who passes through
town. This conflict is also man vs
man.
The only other conflict may be that of the narrator
(Mark Twain) as he tries to make his escape from the company of Simon Wheeler, who tells
Twain all about Smiley's escapades. When Twain arrives and asks Wheeler about the
Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley (who Twain is looking
for)...
Simon
Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me
down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this
paragraph.
It is only at the
end, when someone else calls briefly to Wheeler, that Twain narrowly makes his
escape.
No comments:
Post a Comment