Wednesday, November 15, 2017

In Mark Twain's short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, what is the climax?

In "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the climax is when the two men set down the frogs to race, and it turns out that the frog Jim Smiley has been training for months can't jump at all. Jim Smiley loves to gamble and has been training this frog to win every race for him. He wants to bet on this frog so badly that when a stranger comes to town that doesn't believe him about this being the best jumping frog, Smiley even goes out to catch another frog for comparison. While Smiley is gone, the stranger makes Smiley's frog swallow quail shot so that the frog will be too heavy to jump. Smiley doesn't know this and returns fully expecting to win. The frogs race, and Smiley's frog can't even move. This is the point that the narrator has built up to and the point of highest suspense, so this is the traditional climax of the story.
However, Twain also loves to play with his readers' expectations. So, although we can think of this as the main climax, Twain also teases his readers by denying them some more climactic moments. The gentleman in the story who is telling the narrative about Smiley (a man named Simon Wheeler) wants to continue his story about Smiley chasing down the stranger, but the main narrator of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog" gets up and leaves. He concludes that Wheeler does not know the actual person he is looking for, so he doesn't wait to hear the rest of Wheeler's story. Additionally, the narrator himself does not find the person that he was actually looking for. In both instances, Twain plays with his reader, who is expecting more from this story but never gets it. The audience anticipates that there will be a bigger climax after the frog is unable to jump, but Twain interrupts the story and another climax never arrives.
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/price/frog.htm

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