“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
Text-Dependent Questions (with standards)
1. (RL 1) Twain writes in paragraph 1, “I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a
myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old
Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me
nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If
that was the design, it certainly succeeded.” What can we infer about Simon Wheeler based on Twain’s
quote?
2. (RL3) Twain describes Simon Wheeler as “fat and bald-headed” with “an expression of winning
gentleness and simplicity.” What do these descriptions initially tell the reader about Wheeler? Does
Wheeler ultimately fulfill this description?
3. (RL5) What repetition does Twain use in paragraph 4 and what is the effect?
4. (RL1) Quote any evidence of the setting that you can find in the first 4 paragraphs.
5. (RL1) Twain doesn’t offer any description of the unnamed narrator. What inferences can we make
about his character and what evidence from the text supports those inferences?
6. (RL3) The story is set in an “old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angels.” Why is this
choice of setting important to the story? How would the story change if it had been set in a major city?
7. (RL4) Twain uses such colloquial language as “feller,” “curiosest,” “dangdest” and “solittry” in paragraph
4 (among numerous other examples). How does this language affect the meaning and tone of the story?
8. (RL4) What does the term “infernal reminiscence” mean as it is used in the context of paragraph 1?
9. (RL1) In the first paragraph, the narrator hints at his opinion of his friend from the East. What can we
infer about the friend’s character?
10. (RL5) The last sentence of paragraph 5 is linked together with a series of “and”s. What is Twain’s
intended effect with such a long, strung-together sentence?
11. (RL6) Twain describes how Dan’l Webster would jump up and catch a fly then “flop down on the floor
again as solid as a gob of mud and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as
if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do.” How is Twain’s use of humor evident
in this sentence?
12. (RL3) What is the effect of the stark contrast in the voice of the narrator from the East and the regional
dialect (colloquial language/vernacular) of Simon Wheeler?