Samuel Clemens, better know by his pen name, Mark Twain, was born in Florida Missouri on November 30, 1835.[i] He moved West with his family to Hannibal, Missouri when he was 4, and it was here that Twain would spend his childhood years, and would later write of the many influences of his life on the frontier. [ii]His first job was as an apprentice to a printer’s apprentice for Joseph Ament and was able to secure the job in 1848. Twains first sketches appeared in his brother Orion’s Hannibal journal in 1851, as well as having several sketches published in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening post in 1852. Twain moved around several times, working as a printer in New York city, but eventually returned to his hometown of Hannibal at the age of 19 to pursue his career as a steamboat pilot. Although he secured his pilot license, his career on the Mississippi River was short lived after the Civil War broke out in April 1861 and all trade on the river was halted.
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was Twain’s first literary sensation and was read across the country within a matter of months. [iii] The story of the jumping frog is a story within a story. Twain draws on comical stereotypes of the day through the narrator, whom is a proper, well-mannered Easterner in search of Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley. He also elaborates on the stereotypical Westerner, through his character Simon Wheeler, describing him as “dozing” in an “old dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel’s.”[iv] This man tells the narrator of a completely unrelated character, Jim Smiley, who is of the same last name as the Reverend, and his obsession with betting. Old man Wheeler tells of the many different bets of Jim Smiley, and finally to his unfair defeat by a man who tricked him out of a forty dollar bet on two jumping frogs. The moral of the story is that the more educated and civilized are not always the winners, at least in regards to life on the frontier. Twain writes through a style of realism, using slang and colloquialism’s to accurately depict his character’s as what he thought they would be like in reality.
[i] “A Life Lived in a Rapidly Changing World: Samuel L. Clemens‚ 1835-1910.” Welcome to the Mark Twain House & Museum. The Mark Twain House and Museum, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/biography_main.php>.
[ii] “Hannibal.net | The Hannibal Courier-Post.” Hannibal.net | The Hannibal Courier-Post. The Hannibal Courier Post and Gatehouse Media, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2013. <http://www.marktwainhannibal.com/twain/biography/>.
[iii] ibid.
[iv] Twain, Mark. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
103A: American Literature from 1789 to 1900 