In Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County," the author's use of the vernacular with Wheeler and Smiley might
serve one of two purposes.
On one hand, it might indicate
that the men are from the same part of the country, and perhaps used to telling long
tales and chatting it up around a drink, or at a table of card players. One gets a
mental image of old timers trading stories back and forth, almost in the oral tradition,
in the back woods, where stories would be recounted aloud but never written
down.
On the other hand, especially in light of the
fantastic details of the some of Smiley's animals, that the man who sent the speaker
looking for such "Smiley" had an ulterior motive, perhaps to play a trick on the
speaker, who ends up cornered and nailed to the spot by Wheeler who has many stories to
tell his "new" audience. Dozing on a stool when the speaker enters the bar-room, Wheeler
is well-rested and quickly begins his epic string of
tales.
The animals have unusual characteristics, and
Twain's use of personification of the animals makes the story so much fuller and more
entertaining.
For example, Wheeler describes Smiley's
mare—it's hard to imagine this old nag moving any of her four legs
as Wheeler describes:
...but always at the fag-end of the race she'd
get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her
legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the
fences...
Wheeler also tells
the speaker about Andrew Jackson, Smiley's dog that could beat any other dog by clamping
onto one of the dog's back legs and refusing to ever leg go. Unfortunately, Jackson is
put up against a dog that had no back legs: the story seems simply
impossible:
Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till
he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in
a circular saw...
Even more
amazing his Twain's description of this almost-human dog who loses, is "offended,"
"blames" Smiley (examples of personification), and goes off to
die:
...[Andrew Jackson] come to make a snatch for
his pet holt, he saw in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him
in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter
discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out
bad. 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 holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a
piece and laid down and
died.
The use of the
vernacular by Wheeler and Smiley adds to the charm of the piece.
More importantly, however, as the speech is exactly the same when Wheeler is speaking or
Smiley, I would venture to guess, that as the speaker supposes in his introduction,
there is no Smiley at all, and the tall tales Wheeler is telling
are of his own devising. It is probably a rare occasion that they are aired out at all
(with the townsfolk knowing better than to get "sucked in") except when a stranger comes
to town who doesn't know any better—and ends up sitting and listening while Wheeler
spins some real "yarns."
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