Themes and Characters
A cultured easterner relates his recent visit to a talkative old man at a western mining camp. Rather than providing the information that the easterner […]
Month: January 2009
Literary Qualities
The frame tale structure of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is one of its most important literary devices. In a frame tale, one […]
Social Sensitivity
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in 1865, when Mark Twain was living in the American Southwest, which was still being […]
Topics for Discussion
1. Some of the satiric effects and humor in the story are derived from a clash between the eastern and western cultures in the United […]
Ideas for Reports and Papers
1. Twain’s story was first written as a letter, a style referred to as epistolary. Other examples of epistolary works are Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) […]
Related Titles and Adaptations
The Best Man Wins, directed by John Sturges, was distributed by Columbia in 1948. This film version of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” […]
About the Author
Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919, in New York City, the second child of Sol and Miriam Jillich Salinger. His father, of […]
Setting
The plot of this novel, set soon after the end of World War II, is relatively spare. Holden Caulfield has been expelled from a private […]
Themes and Characters
As he roams about the city, Holden encounters his brother’s old friends, calls strangers to whom friends have referred him, mixes in a hotel bar, […]