Twain & Harte

Mark Twain and Bret Harte often focused on smaller regional communities, or in this case with Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" or Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp", they followed the pioneers to lands that much of the country out east has never experienced yet.

Twain concentrates a lot on the different dialects present in the frontier west. A good quote that exemplifies regionalism is when Simon Wheeler says about Jim Smiley, "He was always ready and laying for a chance; there could be no solittry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it...". Another example of this western dialect that can be a phonological nightmare is this following quote: "He ketched  a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothin for three months but set in his backyard and learn that frog to jump."

Another thing you can take from the dialect and the story that Wheeler tells the narrator, is that all of these pioneers seem almost callow. Even in "The Luck of Roaring Camp", the superstitions that everyone at the mining camp possess, is highly reminiscent of child-like behavior. Is it that the pioneers who are free to establish their own law and live off each other, resort back to their childhood ways, waiting for someone to spoon-feed them their duties? It could be why everyone has lost hope at Roaring Camp, then gain hope with foolish superstition, then lose it again just because a baby dies in a flash flood. The baby wasn't working to bring prosperity to the mining camp. It happened because everyone at Roaring Camp changed their ways when "The Luck" was born. They stopped drinking and fighting, to raise the kid properly, akin to giving up their childish ways to take responsibility like an adult.