Both Mark Twain's story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County," and Bret Harte's short story, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" are both
works in the Western genre and portray culture in the California West. However, aside
from the similarity in setting, both being set in California gold-mining camps, the two
stories are very different.
One of the biggest differences is Twain's
use of satire. Satire is used to attack or criticize any stupidity or vice, often
through stereotypes and exaggeration. Twain uses satire to poke fun at the Western
stereotype that holds Westerners to be uneducated, unsophisticated, and foolish to the
point of being gullible. In Twain's satire, instead it is the narrator from the East
Coast who turns out to be the gullible one in the story. Twain, the narrator, has come
to the Calaveras gold-mining county at a friend's urging because his friend wants to
learn what has become of his childhood friend, Leonidas Smiley. Twain inquires of an old
Westerner, Simon Wheeler, about Smiley. Wheeler tricks Twain into believing that he has
a serious, important story about Smiley and convinces Twain to listen. Instead, Wheeler
spins a long, tall tale about a gambler named Jim Smiley and his jumping frog. Twain
soon realizes that Leonidas Smiley does not really exist, and that he has been duped by
his East Coast friend into meeting Wheeler to be fed this ridiculous tale; Wheeler
further dupes Twain by convincing Twain to listen and by feeding him the tall tale.
Twain's satire presents a polished, educated East Coaster as the gullible one, while the
uncouth, uneducated Westerner is actually the clever one.
Harte does
not use satire to present the West, instead he uses comic relief. Instead of showing the
reader that the stereotype of the Westerner is just a stereotype, as Twain does, Harte
fortifies the stereotype and uses the narrator to poke further fun of the stereotype. In
Harte's story, the citizens of Poker Flat mining camp have decided to rid the county of
trouble makers, and exile a gambler, a prostitute, the prostitute's madam, and a drunken
thief. The exiles must find shelter and head for the next camp, Sandy Bar, further into
the mountains. Sandy Bar is a day's journey and the banished have very few provisions,
plus it is winter, and snow is expected. Harte chooses to use sarcastic narrative to
emphasize the direness of the lawless group's situation, plus, to emphasize the lack of
the group's propriety and common sense. One example of Harte's humorous, sarcastic
narrative is the line:
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with
sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
fortunate.
A second example
is the line:
But they were furnished with liquor, which in
this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and
prescience.
Both of these
sarcastic lines help to paint the exiles as brainless, corrupt individuals that fit the
Western stereotype.
Therefore, one significant similarity between
Twain's and Harte's stories is the use of the California gold mine setting, and one
significant difference is the way that both authors choose to either annihilate or
fortify the Western stereotype.
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