Mark Twain’s The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is well written in its character and plot description. Twain captured the heart of the south, and makes you feel like you are actually in the bar with Simon Wheeler, listening to his story about Jim Smiley and the frog, Dan’l Webster.
I liked the description for how Simon Wheeler spoke: “Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he turned his initial sentence, and he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm.”
I liked the character description Mark Twain used for Smiley’s mare: “the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind.”
It is almost like the reader has to imagine reading this with a southern accent, especially during the lines: “Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats and all them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you.” I can picture the narrator hearing the words with a southern drawl attached.
I also liked how he made the story end abruptly, leaving us to wonder what happened to Jim Smiley when the other fellow found out about his cheating by weighing down the frog. I think this is the first story I have read where the narrator didn’t want to continue and know the rest of the story. Usually it is the reader that gives up on a story, not the people in the story.
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