The Frame Story
Summary
The narrator visits Simon Wheeler in a tavern in Angel’s Camp, Calaveras County, California, a gold-rush mining town. He calls on Wheeler at the request of his friend from back East to ask after the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley. He finds Simon Wheeler dozing by the stove and describes him as old, fat, simple, and gentle. As Wheeler backs the narrator into a corner and launches into a series of tall tales about a completely different man named Jim Smiley, the narrator suspects that his friend made up Leonidas as a pretext to entrap him into listening to Wheeler’s “long and tedious” stories.
Analysis
An earlier version of the story, entitled “Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog,” began with a letter addressed to A. Ward, an allusion to Artemus Ward, a popular humor writer and friend of Twain’s.
“Mr. A. Ward,
Dear Sir: -- Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after your friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it. I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth -- that you never knew such a personage, and that you only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was your design, Mr. Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.”
This epistolatory format is lost in later versions, but the frame structure of a story within a story remains. This frame structure was familiar to nineteenth-century readers. These stories were typically set in the southwestern United States and featured sophisticated Easterners encountering rough frontiersmen who tell them tall tales. Twain followed the conventions of this form, but also went beyond it. Traditionally, the narrator is presented as the author. This story’s innovation is its gap between authorial and narrative presence: through satire, Twain pokes fun at the narrator’s pretentiousness.
The narrator speaks in an exaggerated, ostentatious formal manner with phrases such as "in compliance with the request of a friend of mine'' and "hereunto append the result” and "would feel under many obligations to him.” The effect is ridiculous. He deploys verbal irony to generate a deadpan tone, as he addresses a like-minded educated Eastern audience. His descriptions of Simon Wheeler, for example that he “had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity'' come off as a condescending uninformed stereotype of a simple yokel. The story implies that the narrator’s superior attitude is unjustified. Far from being a passive dolt, Wheeler traps the narrator into listening to his stories, which the narrator claims to find tedious, but apparently is taken by enough to repeat to the reader. Wheeler possesses local knowledge that allows him to fool the narrator into listening to his tall tales, which play on the tension between truth and fiction. Twain targets both the narrator and Wheeler as subjects of satire. They are both unreliable storytellers.
Jim Smiley
Summary
Wheeler’s story within the story commences, all about a gambler named Jim Smiley. Jim Smiley would bet on anything. He was a lucky man who almost always won. He bet on dog fights, horse races, and even the ill health of the county parson’s wife. Smiley trained animals to win bets for him. Both his horse, the "fifteen-minute nag," and his dog, “Andrew Jackson,” didn’t seem like much, but would surprisingly win in the end. Andrew Jackson had a trick during a fight of catching the other dog’s back legs in his mouth tenaciously. This worked until he fought a dog that didn’t have back legs. When Andrew Jackson didn’t know what to do, he looked heartbrokenly at Smiley and died. Wheeler comments that the dog probably had some “genius” and “talent” in him, since he managed to come out on top despite a lack of opportunities.
Analysis
Wheeler speaks in third person past-tense narration as he tells the story of Jim Smiley. His voice contrasts with the narrator’s stilted deadpan irony, in its easy, genial vernacular slang. He is obviously a master storyteller of tall tales, as he builds the character of Smiley, the enterprising, optimistic gambler, out of a series of vignettes describing his relationships with his animals. The writing is full of colorful imagery, likable underdog characters, and unlikely reversals of fortune. Through use of repetition, contractions, grammatical errors, and misspellings, Twain captures Smiley’s regional accent and the improvisational oral genre of the tall tale.
Jim Smiley’s dog shares the name of the seventh president of the United States: Andrew Jackson. He served as president 1829–1837, just before Wheeler’s story takes place. Twain likely named the character after the president to invoke his determination and fierceness in battle. Jackson was nicknamed “Old Hickory” because of his toughness as a commander in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Pres. Andrew Jackson also fits into Simon Wheeler’s Western tall tale because of his years as a frontier lawyer, his populist defense of the common man, and his taste for gambling. Jackson was also perceived as a symbol of democratic upward mobility—a man of humble origins who, through talent and tenacity, rose to the top.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog
Summary
Smiley caught a frog, named him Dan’l Webster, and took him home to “educate” him. For the next three months, he did nothing but teach the frog. It could turn somersaults in the air and catch flies on command. Dan’l Webster’s specialty was to jump higher than any other frog around. Despite his many gifts, he was "modest and straight-forward.” Jim Smiley kept Dan’l Webster in a box and would occasionally fetch him for a bet.
One day, a stranger in the camp asks Smiley what’s in the box. Smiley responds indifferently that it could be other animals, but it’s a frog. The stranger examines the box and asks what the frog is good for. Smiley replies casually that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County. The stranger replies that he doesn’t see anything unique about that frog. Smiley says, "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't understand 'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
The stranger thinks about it, and then says that if he had a frog, he would take the bet. Smiley offers to catch him a frog, and hands the box with Dan’l Webster to the stranger. While Smiley is out, the stranger takes Dan’l out of his box, opens his mouth, and fills him with quail shot. Then he sets him on the floor. Smiley comes back from the swamp with a frog and gives him to the stranger. They set the frogs side-by-side with even fore-paws. Smiley calls “One two three jump!" and they each touch their frogs from behind. The new frog hops off. Dan’l Webster tries to jump but can’t budge. Smiley is surprised, disgusted, and confused. The stranger takes the money and starts away, and as he’s leaving repeats what he said earlier about not seeing anything special about Dan’l Webster. Smiley scratches his head, stares at his frog, and wonders aloud what happened. He’s concerned that there’s something the matter with Dan’l Webster, as he looks “mighty baggy, somehow." He picks up the frog and exclaims that he weighs five pounds! When he turns Dan’l Webster upside down, Dan’l belches out a double handful of shot. Smiley realizes that he has been swindled, and runs after the stranger angrily, but fails to catch him.
Analysis
Dan’l Webster is named after Daniel Webster, a statesman from New England known for his eloquence. Smiley takes great pride in how well he educated Dan’l Webster, which may be a reason he would name his frog after the famously brilliant orator. While Webster served as a senator and Secretary of State, he lost his bid for the presidency in 1836. Twain may also have chosen the name as a joke because like the statesman, the frog lost.
The story of the jumping frog contest is the anti-climax of Simon Wheeler’s tall tale. The language heightens the comic drama of the contest with kinesthetic and tactile imagery. By relaying the stories of Smiley’s successful bets first, Wheeler sets up the narrator and the reader to think that Dan’l Webster will prevail through his talent and Smiely’s training. But Smiley’s faith in Dan’l Webster’s outstanding qualities, and efforts to educate him, are defeated by the stranger’s deception.
Jim Smiley, while he has the reputation of being lucky, is actually a cunning gambler. He observes unique qualities in animals that make them better bets than they appear. And he works to cultivate those qualities. His bets require vision, faith, and an enterprising nature. He allows appearances to deceive those he gambles with. In the case of Dan’l Webster, he enhances that deception by feigning indifference. This type of deception is very different than that of the stranger. The stranger correctly reads Smiley’s trusting nature and takes advantage of that to cheat—to fill Dan’l Webster with quail shot so he is too heavy to jump, and so can’t compete. The stranger’s cheating trumps Smiley’s cleverness.
The End
Summary
Simon Wheeler’s story gets cut off when he hears his name called from the front yard and goes out. He tells the narrator to wait becausehe won’t be long. The narrator figures he won’t find out anything about Leonidas W. Smiley, so he starts to leave, but encounters Wheeler again in the doorway. Wheeler begins to tell the narrator another tall tale about Smiley’s yellow one-eyed cow without a tail. The narrator interrupts good-naturedly, says goodbye, and leaves.
Analysis
The story achieves balance in symmetrical opposition: the stranger dupes a local, Jim Smiley, while in the frame story, Simon Wheeler, a local, dupes the narrator, a stranger. So, both strangers and locals alike are duped in the end. It entertains because both storytellers are good-natured. And the story manages to be both satirical and light-hearted at once.
