The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Literary Elements

Tall Tale

Angel's Camp, Calaveras County, California 1849 or 50 and some years later

The narrator: first person point of view
Simon Wheeler: third person point of view

Humorous

Protagonist: Jim Smiley/Antagonist: the stranger Protagonist: the narrator/Antagonist: Simon Wheeler

Between the duper and duped

The jumping frog contest is an anti-climax, when Dan’l Webster can’t compete.

The narrator’s suspicion that his friend played a joke on him by sending him to Wheeler to ask after Leonidas Smiley foreshadows the fact that the story will be a tall tale.

Wheeler's description of Jim Smiley as the "curiousest man about betting" is an understatement of Smiley’s wild betting behavior.

Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States and the first true populist to have that job.

Daniel Webster, a senator and Secretary of State, known for his extraordinary speaking skills and nationalism.

See "Imagery" section.

The narrator complains that he was forced to listen to Simon Wheeler’s tall tales, and then goes on to subject the reader to the same stories.

"If there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken fight, he'd bet on it."

“He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take bolt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius I know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent.”

"You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted."

“Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman”