Huck Superstistion in the Novel

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Recommended: Themes of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck Superstistion in the Novel

In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, there is a lot of superstition. Some examples of superstition in the novel are Huck killing a spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball used to tell fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin Huck touches that brings Huck and Jim good and bad luck. Superstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn.

In Chapter one Huck sees a spider crawling up his shoulder, so he flipped it off and it went into the flame of the candle. Before he could get it out, it was already shriveled up. Huck didn't need anyone to tell him that it was a bad sign and would give him bad luck. Huck got scared and shook his clothes off, and turned in his tracks three times. He then tied a lock of his hair with a thread to keep the witches away. "You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep of bad luck when you'd killed a spider".

In chapter four Huck sees Pap's footprints in the snow. So Huck goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim gets a hair-ball that is the size of a fist that he took from an ox's stomach. Jim asks the hair-ball; Why is Pap here? But the hair-ball won't answer. Jim says it needs money, so Huck gives Jim a counterfeit quarter. Jim puts the quarter under the hair-ball. The hair-ball talks to Jim and Jim tells Huck that it says. "Yo'ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den ag'in he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is tores' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angles hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one g...

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... tobacco, so he went to the craven to get some, and finds a rattlesnake. Huck kills it and curled it up and put it on the foot of Jim's blanket. Night came and Jim flung himself on the blanket and the snake's mate was there, and it bit Jim on the heel. Jim tells Huck to chop off the snake's head, then skin the body of the snake and roast a piece of it. He took the rattles off and tied them to Jim’s wrist. Jim said it would help him. Huck says "I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it".

As one can see Superstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn. Huck killing the spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball that tells fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin that Huck touched are examples that brought bad luck to Huck and Jim in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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