The Notorious Jumping Frog - Essay Example

The setup is the Angel Camp mine town in the 1849 winter/1850 spring during the gold rush. The narration is in the fashion of a tale within a tale, quite confusion and is in vernacular speech as indicated by the “jumping frog”. The story begins with the story teller, from the East, who has been sent on an errand to search an old friend of his friend, Levidas.W.Smilie in the Angel Camp. On arrival, he is instructed to ask Simon Wheeler, a sleepy ,fat bald old man, clearly someone who never cared for grooming o noble mannerisms or education, from the East most probably and asks him of a Levidas .W. Smilie since he was in his company once.

The Smilie that Wheeler points he narrator to is a Reverend W. Jim Smilie. A man of contradictionsstraightfrom his name Reverend M.a person of noble qualities and sense of education, automatically from the West, while the other half, Jim Smilie, a common first and sur name that represents basically…a nobody, someone from the East. So the East/West man, Jim Smile a die-hard gambler who even bets on the time his friend Walker’s wife would die, he was very sure of his bets. He also finds women of questionable virtues a good sport and he minded his looks far too much for an Easterner.

A story of a slow mare and a young pup, (comically named after the first Westerner to become an American president, Andrew Jackson-1830 -who advocated for equal voting rights between the East and Westerners, he even shared a name with Smilie, the gambler!) and a frog named Dan Webster (coined from Senator Daniel Webster who fought for the freedom of South America) from the comes up. There’s yet to be another story about a cow, but the narrator leaves, and so does his audience who by now has lost time, not found what he was looking for and is lost.

BODY 1st and 2nd Story-The slow mare and Andrew Jackson, a young pup Smilie had a mare that was really slow, old and asthmatic, that even with a 15min head-start, she would crazily bolt ahead, wheezing until she could win, barely. She wins due to her focus on the race and she never gives up. Andrew Jackson didn’t look like he could do anything, but as soon as somebody bet on him; he’d beat a better looking dog. The trick was to bite the other dog’s back leg until the other dog couldn’t put up a fight and Andrew won.

One day he was put against a dog without back legs, he was so disoriented he walked away from Smilie and later died. Andrew won by mastering his opponents’ weaknesses and attacking them to the end of the fight. 3rd Story - The Jumping frog, Dan’l Webster Smilie hah a pet frog which like all his other pets, he gambled with. This one day, he walks up to a stranger and tells him that his frog, Dan’l Webster can jump higher than all frogs, and he bet his 40 buck for it. The man agrees to the bet and Smilie goes to catch a wild frog for comparison.

While away he stranger puts lead powder into the frog’s mouth and when jumping time cane, Smilie’s frog couldn’t jump, so he lost the best. He later put his frog upside down and discovered the powder. Dan’l won because he followed the master’s instruction to the latter; he was taught how to jump high so he jumped, though he never lasted a celebrated win! ANALYSIS/ CRITIC My critic is based on the idea that brains out do brains too. Smilie was a gambler, and so were all his pets. All had their own wits.

Andrew Jackson fragile though he was, bit the hind leg of his stronger opponent, a leg that the opponent cannot reach so could not harm Andrew