While his customary satire is present in Mark Twain's short
story "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," there is a cloaking of this satire as
Twain's narrator is not directly involved. Instead, the story is related as an epistolary tale.
So, for a thesis about the use of literary devices, you may wish to analyze how Twain's use of
the frame story, or epistolary tale, is his clever way of disguising his satire of the American
West and the American East by giving the story a sense of authenticity with the reporting of the
main narrator.
Another literary device that you could build a thesis
around is the use by Twain of hyperbole. Hyperbole is a figure of speech that involves obvious
exaggeration; it greatly helps to advance the satire of Twain's piece by increasing the level of
humor as Twain ridicules the stereotypes of the East and the West of the United States. Here is
one example of Twain's use of hyperbole for humorous and satiric
effect:
[Wheeler]
never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which
he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all
through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity,
which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or
funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as
men of transcendent genius in finesse.
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