the jumping frog response

Taylor Cole
A.P. English
Ms. Brown
The Jumping Frog
The jumping frog story demonstrates realism by expressing the author’s opinion on the politics of this time. Mark Twain showed this by using a southern alliterate man talk about an old childhood friend of his who always betted on everything it was almost like he never thought before he made his actions. For example, a farmer’s wife was very ill and everyone seems to be very optimistic about her getting better but then he says I bet she won’t. This really showed realism to me because he didn’t try to sugar coat this in any way, he gave it in a this is what I know will happen and I’ll even bet on it to prove it type of way.
In the sense of expressing his political views the main character, Smiley’s dog was named Andrew Jackson, who was of course the president around this time. Andrew Jackson’s character in this story was to let dogs tear him up until the very end of the fight when he chops at their legs and makes them numb so they won’t be able to move when he finally attacks. But one day the dog thinks his old coping mechanisms during a fight are always going to get him a win, but this one dog has no hind legs. This gives Mark Twain’s real thoughts on Jackson, he feels as if Jackson thinks he can always have victories based on his own traditional ways but when the tables are turned a little differently and everything doesn’t go as planned he doesn’t know what to do and he dies out. And Twain is very straight to the point about this subject too, he leaves no details out and he makes it clear of what type of president he thinks Jackson is, and also what type of mind set that he thinks the U.S. has for voting for putting him in office, kind of like how sure Smiley is of him.
The other political view he gives us is with the jumping frog, named Daniel Webster is the jumping frog who always wins the bets. He always wins these bets because he is trained to do so. But then the same kind of twist happens with him as it did with Andrew Jackson. I feel like Smiley was supposed to be symbolizing the U.S. because once he turned his back on Webster he became full of himself and couldn’t win any bets anymore. I also think it crazy how Smiley leaves his frog with a complete stranger to go find another frog for his opponent. He was so sure that he was going to win that he could leave his most prize possession alone with his competition. It is also significant in the end when he finally realizes why his frog didn’t win, and he spit up all the crap the other man fed him. The typical reaction is for him to go running after the guy who did this but in reality he should blame himself. It’s ultimately showing that the people see the flaws of the people that they’ve voted into to higher rank position and automatically want to blame that person or other people that was of that persons influence. But in reality Twain feels as if they should be blaming themselves.