The Outcasts Of Poker Flat Essay

“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences” (M. Scott Peck). The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain and The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte have similarities and differences using regionalistic qualities in the setting, characters, and the narrator. The settings in The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and The Outcasts of Poker Flat have many differences. In The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, there is very little said about the setting. However, the reader can make inferences about the setting by the dialect of the characters. “And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you’d think he warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something.” In that sentence the reader would know that the setting of the book is in the “wild west” (Twain 663). On the other hand, in The Outcasts of Poker Flat the setting is a big part of the story. It greatly impacts the characters and what happens in the story. “That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rendering asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.” The characters of the story are trapped in a snowstorm and cannot get back to Poker Flat. The storm eventually kills everyone (Harte 683). In addition to setting, the characters in the two …show more content…
In The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, the narration is in first-person, but the narrator rarely speaks in the story for another character talks the entire time. “I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler…” (Twain 660). However, in The Outcasts of Poker Flat, the narration is in third-person and the narrator knows everything about the characters and their thoughts. “As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night” (Harte