Mark Twain's famous short story belongs to (or perhaps even originated) a genre of specifically American satire that survived well into the twentieth century in the form of television comedies such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Beverly Hillbillies.
In the tale of the jumping frog, Mark Twain pokes fun at the folksy, naive attitude of the US frontier class. It's satiric, but in a good-natured way, far removed from the angry, slashing satire typical of Swift and other British and European writers. The colloquialisms of the language are comical, as is the long-windedness of the narration, in which virtually nothing of significance happens except the rather goofy trick that is played upon Jim Smiley and his frog. If there is a moral to the story, it's the basic one that no man is to be trusted. The fact that Smiley is so easily duped is probably meant to illustrate the trusting nature of the American soul in the seemingly uncorrupted backwoods setting.
Admittedly, in this last point, our analysis of the story as a satire is perhaps invalidated. Usually satirists are critical of the object of their satire—in fact, this is the whole purpose of the genre: to hold up to ridicule something considered evil or pernicious. In his folksy style, Mark Twain presents Americans in the way they are expected to be, as innocent rubes.
So another layer of meaning is present—in which the setting and the action are a mild caricature of the way frontiersman are perceived. In this sense, we could even interpret the story as a satire not of rural, western Americans but of those outside observers who would tend to have a stereotyped view of them. But if so, it's a very subtle intention. It's more likely that Mark Twain intended the story as simply a comical anecdote illustrative of life in the New World.
Yes, Mark Twain's "The Celebrating Jumping Frog" is certainly a satire, which (as described by other contributors already) plays heavily on East and Western stereotypes of the United States (in Twain's lifetime), but I would add that the satire runs further, running within the narrative of the Tall Tale being told about Smiley. Here, I would suggest we have a satire of life within the West, and the kinds of diversions that tend to correspond with it. Smiley, as a character, is primarily defined by his obsession with wagers, always gambling about anything and everything, and in this perhaps we can also add that the story satirizes these kinds of vices, especially by conveying just how petty all these wagers ultimately are (because in this story, Smiley has to make wagers just so he'd have something to make a wager about, and he'll take up just about any wager no matter how ludicrous it might be...see his jumping frog for example). I'd suggest Twain's story shines a light on life's banalities, and on the silliness and pettiness which runs through the human condition, and this continues both in the manner through which Wheeler's tall tale plays out (with Smiley cheated by his opponent) as well as in the resolution of the larger story itself, where the tall tale is itself dismissed as a pointless distraction, and the narrator walks out on Wheeler, even as he is starting up in another storytelling digression.
In his short story “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” the humorist Mark Twain satirizes the tall tale genre and those from the Eastern and the Western parts of America.
An essential element of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is satire. In the narrative, people from the Western and the Eastern parts of America are subjected to ridicule as they are presented in exaggerated forms. The stereotype of the well-educated, cultured, and sophisticated Easterner is held up against the uneducated, gullible, and unworldly Westerner. In the humorous twist of Twain’s narrative, it is the sophisticated Easterner, an irritable snob, who is outdone by the garrulous Westerner, Wheeler. Wheeler speaks in a distinct regional dialect that makes him all the more colorful and unusual. He exaggerates with grave dignity as he elaborates on the talents of Daniel Webster, the frog. For instance, Wheeler describes the talents of Smiley’s frog:
[Simon would] set Dan’l Webster down her on this floor…and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud….
In both a funny and satirical twist, the Easterner who comes to Wheeler because he seeks Leonidas W. Smiley is tricked into listening to the tall tale of the frog Daniel Webster. He is fooled by the friend who has sent him to Wheeler, and by Wheeler himself, a seemingly backward man who is really an experienced storyteller whose serious manner tricks even the sophisticated listener.
This 1865 short story by Mark Twain is indeed a social satire. His target in this story were people who subscribed to regional stereotypes in 19th century America.
Easterners were stereotyped as snobby intellectuals with formal education and cultural sophistication. By contrast, Westerners were stereotyped as uneducated, uncivilized, and none too bright.
Twain casts his first-person narrator as an Easterner who is played for a fool by a "friend" who sets him up to become a captive audience for Westerner Simon Wheeler, a long-winded raconteur. Within the tall tale Wheeler spins there is another deception going on between a local and a stranger--thereby humorously deepening the satire.
The sophisticated Easterner proves to be gullible and falls victim to both his friend and the clever and entertaining Simon Wheeler.
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