Superstition inHuck Finn In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain, there is a lot of superstition.
Someexamples of superstition in the novel are Huck killing aspider which is bad luck, the hair-ball used to tell fortunes,and the rattle-snake skin Huck touches that brings Huck andJim good and bad luck. Superstition plays an important rolein the novel Huck Finn. In Chapter one Huck sees a spidercrawling up his shoulder, so he flipped it off and it went intothe flame of the candle. Before he could get it out, it wasalready shriveled up.
Huck didn’t need anyone to tell himthat it was an bad sign and would give him bad luck. Huckgot scared and shook his clothes off, and turned in his tracksthree times. He then tied a lock of his hair with a thread tokeep the witches away. “You do that when you’ve lost ahorseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over thedoor, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way tokeep of bad luck when you’d killed a spider. “(Twain 5).
Inchapter four Huck sees Pap’s footprints in the snow. SoHuck goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim gets ahair-ball that is the size of a fist that he took from an ox’sstomach. Jim asks the hair-ball; Why is Pap here? But thehair-ball won’t answer. Jim says it needs money, so Huckgives Jim a counterfeit quarter.
Jim puts the quarter underthe hair-ball. The hair-ball talks to Jim and Jim tells Huckthat it says. “Yo’ole father doan’ know yit what he’s a-gwyneto do. Sometimes he spec he’ll go ‘way, en den ag’in he speche’ll stay. De bes’ way is tores’ easy en let de ole man takehis own way. Dey’s two angles hoverin’ roun’ ’bout him.
Oneuv’em is white en shiny, en t’other one is black. De white onegits him to go right a little while, den de black one sil in engust it all up. A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetchhim at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to haveconsidable trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimesyou gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick;but every time you’s gwyne to git well ag’in.
Dey’s two galsflyin’ ’bout yo’ in yo’ life. One uv ’em’s light en t’other one isdark. One is rich en t’other is po’. You’s gwyne to marry depo’ one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep’way fum de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk,’kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung. “(Twain 19).
Huck goes home and goes up to his room thatnight and Pap is there. In Chapter ten, Huck and Jim run intogood luck and bad luck. The good luck was Huck and Jimfinds eight dollars in the pocket of an overcoat. After dinneron Friday, they are lying in the grass, then Huck ran out oftobacco, so he went to the craven to get some, and finds arattlesnake.
Huck kills it and curled it up and put it on thefoot of Jim’s blanket. Night came and Jim flung himself onthe blanket and the snake’s mate was there, and it bit Jim onthe heel. Jim tells Huck to chop off the snake’s head, thenskin the body of the snake and roast a peice of it. He tookthe rattles off and tied them to Jim wrist. Jim said it wouldhelp him. Huck says “I made up my mind I wouldn’t evertake a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that Isee what had come of it.
” (Twain 52). As one can seeSuperstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn.Huck killing the spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball thattells fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin that Huck touchedare examples that brought bad luck to Huck and Jim in thenovel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.Book Reports
