“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calavaras County”

By Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Real name was Samuel Clemens

His pen name (“Mark Twain”) was a signal yelled out by riverboat pilots- connected him to his youth on the Mississippi River

Wrote about American themes using the American English people actually spoke and dirt-poor heroes

Deaths of his wife and daughters left him bitter and cynical

His writing began to depict a pessimistic view of society and human nature

(p. 562)

What is a FRAME NARRATIVE?

In a nutshell, a frame narrative is a “story within a story.”

Shorter Story

Story

Examples of FRAME NARRATIVES...

• Titanic – (the movie) The story of “Old Rose” revisiting the site of the Titanic “bookends” the love story of Jack and “Young Rose” onboard the ship in 1912.

• Forrest Gump – Forrest (in the present) is telling his life story (of Forrest in the past) to various citizens on the park bench.

• Can you think of any others?

Local Color and Regional Dialect

Regional Dialect Ex. “Thish-yer”        

StandardEnglish

Ex. This here        

Local Color- the use in a literary work of characters and details unique to a particular geographic area

Regional Dialect- language specific to a particular area of the country

Animals

Animal Deceptive characteristics that made people think it would lose.

How the animal won bets for Jim

Fifteen-minute Nag

Andrew Jackson

Dan’l Webster

Literary terms

Term Definition Example from Story

Characterization act of creating and developing a character

Point of view perspective from which a story is told

Personification a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics

Simile comparison using like or as

Stereotype thought that may be adopted

about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things

Satire Writing that ridicules or critizes