Contrast of Mark Twain and Sedaris

Mark Twain的文章“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”，以及Sedaris的作品“You Can’t Kill the Rooster”，是一个滑稽而又有趣的故事。他们有某种共同之处，不是因为他们都是喜剧，而是因为他们有一些会使人有所反应的共同元素。

Mark Twain’s essay “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, as well as the work of Sedaris, “You Can’t Kill the Rooster”, is a funny story. They are somehow in common, not just they are all comedies, but because they have some of the common elements that would make people response.

To start with, both of their works uses their cruelty. Through the essay, readers can feel that Sedaris felt depressed when his father showed disappointed with him while his brother could survive with mouthful bad words and low grades. The similar situation happened in Mark Twain’s work. He wrote “…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”(Mark Twain, 1). We could tell he was very unwilling to be sitting there and listen to the old man telling a long, and to his point of view, an boring story of someone he didn’t know.

Incongruity is also an important role when making a funny atmosphere. The jumping frog story was supposed to be funny but the person who was telling it seemed very peaceful, had no changes in his tones, or even showed his admiration of the two persons, as Mark described as “He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence” (Mark Twain, 2), “a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity” (Mark Twain, 2). When we are telling something very funny, we used to laughing as we talk, or we’ll use some gestures or facial expressions to strengthen the funny effect. This brought incongruity of the story. In terms of Sedaris story, the incongruity appears in the huge difference between a polite father who would never speak any bad languages and a son with f-words or “vernacular term for the female genitalia”(Sedaris, 6), as the writer put, full of his mouth.

Irony, as a key element of comedy, can’t be ignored in both essays. In “You can’t kill the Rooster”, as I mentioned in my last essay, Sedaris used irony everywhere in his writing to emphasize how ironic it was for a gentle father and several polite brothers and sisters to have reared a naughty boy who didn’t match any of their expectations. Besides the irony within the narrative, there’s also a kind of irony you can only feel when reading it (O’Shannon, 5). When he described his mother’s attitude toward Paul, he wrote that his mother was, for the most part, delighted with his brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species (Sedaris, 3). This will trigger you to laugh when you are reading and recalling that Paul called himself a rooster. The irony does not exist in the narrative but in the response of the readers.

While in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, Mark Twain used irony as skilled as in his other works. O’Shannon define irony as “if a character (or a society) needs to accomplish a specific goal an ironic twist may determine…or that goal is achieved but produces the opposite of the intended effect” in his book. When telling the story of the dog, Andrew Jackson, the dog would win if he could catch the hind legs of his competitors, but bad luck happened when his competitor had no hind legs. The dog ended up dying in depression, which is both ironic and a relief of the subversive side for the readers. It also fit in the respect of the losing of Smiley in the end.

While those two essays have a lot in common, they also have various differences between them. First of all is the distinct writing style that Mark Twain applied. He used a lot of slangs of local people to trigger the response. For example, “a dog once that didn't have no hind legs” (Mark Twain, 4) is a double denial, which we usually use to express affirmation, but the local people use it to deny. Direct spellings of the special pronunciations, like “ketched” (Mark Twain, 5) for “catched”, “edercate” (Mark Twain, 5) for “educate”, “Dan'l” (Mark Twain, 5) ifor “Daniel” and so on, is also a distinguish feature of Mark Twain. This writing skill will act as an enhancer when the reader can get what the word really is and what the difference between the accent and the standard English is, but will become a inhibitor for those who couldn’t understand them easily or even get confused when reading. Although Sedaris also used the element of accent in his essay, it was used to push the story forward, not as an additional element to make the atmosphere feel funny.

It also impressed me that Mark Twain used disappointment as a key factor. Mr. Wheeler told a series story emphasizing how good a bettor Smiley was. He would never lose when betting on no matter horses, cats or dogs. Naturally audience are expecting the jumping frog to win, while he, at the important moment, “he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out” (Mark Twain, 7). Audience are disappointed by the failure, thus exert a funny mood in the audience. When we read “You can’t kill the Rooster”, you can feel the disappointment of Sedaris and his father, but you won’t feel disappoint yourself. This is because the author hadn’t written any content to describe the polite side of Paul. When we read it, we didn’t feel cheated by the former parts of the essay. If Sedaris put the story as Paul was polite and gentle when he was young while as he grew up he became rude, the audience might feel disappointed as reading Mark Twain.

To tell the truth, first time I read “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, I didn’t feel funny. After I googled the traits of Mark Twain’s essays, I paid extra attention on the slangs he used to help me better understand the article. So if someone doesn’t feel funny at this essay, I at first place will assume the poor reader was confused by the writing style as I was. It is an enhancer for those who understands but an inhibitor for those who not, like I mentioned in a former paragraph.

In the receivers’ point of view, those who were once hurt by the discrimination of accents might not find it funny as well, because this recalls some bad memories. O’Shannon in his book says that a receiver’s appreciation for the execution of the joke may enhance the response (O’Shannon, 13). Similarly, the a receiver’s despise for the execution of the joke my inhibit the response, though the author might have no offence to its readers.

Furthermore, animal protectors would also ignore the funny effect that Mark Twain try to make. In their opinion, using animals to bet is already evil, let alone making fun of it, with a dog dying and a frog fed with shot. When reading this article, if they feel morally offended, the happiness will fade. But if the animal protector is dating his/her dream girl/boy, he/she might try to forgive the teller and smile as a gentleman/lady.

Mark Twain and David Sedaris are both great comedy authors. They can both make you feel happy when you read a line and imagine the incongruity scene in your mind and burst out laughters. But when you try to tell your friend these two stories, things might work as well. I think the form of a joke is also important, as O’Shannon puts it in his book that situation might affect one’s response to a joke. Some humour would only work if you write them down, and apparently Mark and David handled it well.

Works cited
O’Shannon, What Are You laughing at? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event.
Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
David Sedaris, You Can’t Kill the Rooster.

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