- Introduction
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- Task
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Local Color
Local color, interchangeable with regionalism, became a popular form of writing between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century because this type of writing gave authenticity to the conversations between characters.
Local color grew out of American Realism; it attempted to portray the dialect of the region as accurately as possible. However, local color lacks the seriousness of true realism.
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Dialect
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Tall Tales
Have you ever listened to one of your friends tell a story that you know wasn't entirely true? Tall tales are like those stories; they are fictional stories with exaggerated hyperbole parts in them. Tall tales can be about historical characters who are given larger-than-life parts. To pass the time away, the men from the American frontier made up tales boasting of various events and figures of the Old West. Some examples include Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan, and Calamity Jane.
Tall Tale Characteristics:
- The main character is a regular person, but with superhuman abilities.
- There is a problem that the character solves in a peculiar way.
- Details in the story are exaggerated.
- Colloquial everyday language is used.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, a few nights after Halley's Comet A visible comet that appears about every 75 years. flashed through the sky. He grew up along the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri, the setting of many of his stories. At the age of four, he befriended some of his most famous character prototypes. Clemens worked on the Mississippi River for a number of years. He loved the river so much that he chose his pen name A nom de plume, or pen name, is a pseudonym that the author chooses to replace his real name. as Mark Twain.
When Twain left the river lift, he didn't come back to live there, but he did return to the town through his writings.
Also considered the father of realism, Mark Twain wrote stories about real life characters that capture the hearts of all who read them. His stories make people laugh, and they can identify with his characters. One of the reasons that Mark Twain is considered the foremost pioneer of realism is that his writing portrays life as it actually happened with no idealism A literary movement that focused on personal ideas – how the author felt things should be, not as they actually were. or romanticism.
Twain liked to write about what he knew, so he wrote:
- travel books,
- historical novels,
- short stories, and
- fictional novels.
Ironically, Twain died on April 21, 1910, the night after Halley's Comet was visible again for the first time since his birth. He had said, “I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”
“Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
Mark Twain's “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in the magazine The New York Saturday Press in 1865. This story made Twain famous. The original title was “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”; however, Twain later changed the title.
The humorous tall tale is a frame story, which means one story contains the telling of another story.
The story begins in 1849 at Angel's Camp, a mining town in California, with the narrator telling about how a friend of his requested him to speak with Simon Wheeler in order to find out about a man named Reverend Leonidis Smiley. At this time the other story begins; Wheeler tells a long story about Jim Smiley, a gambler.
Calaveras County is a real place in California. Angel's Camp is also a real town inside Calaveras County.
Before you read the short story, look over the vocabulary words.
Read Mark Twain's “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” You may listen (16:10) to the short story as you read along using the audio controls below.
Words to Know
Vocabulary is attained from being exposed to words. How are you exposed to words? From reading texts, of course! Your reading comprehension depends on your vocabulary knowledge, too.
What do you do if you read over a word you don't know? If you skip words because you don't know their meanings, then the content becomes blurry, and you are unable to successfully use active reading tools.
One active reading tool you can use is context clues. Using context clues means using the words surrounding the unknown word in order to figure out the meaning. Using context clues is like being a vocabulary detective. You must put clues together in the sentence in order to make an intelligent guess as to what the definition of the unknown word is.
Figuring out word meanings will save you lots of time and headaches. There are several ways to figure out definitions, but one of the easiest ways is through clues in the writing. Writers insert words and/or phrases around unfamiliar words that can help readers understand the meaning of a word.
By using context clues, you do not have to search dictionary entries; the definition is nearby. The clue may appear within the same sentence or it may follow in the next sentence. The majority of your vocabulary is gained by reading, so it is important that you take advantage of the clues. There are several different types of context clues to help you determine unfamiliar words. Authors often use punctuation clues to help the reader, such as commas, dashes, or parenthesis.
