Superstition
Francis Bacon once stated, “The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.” In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain there is a theme of superstition all throughout the novel. Twain manifests that superstitions are only true when a person sees it happen. If nothing happens then it is brushed off and forgotten about. Superstitions, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, are “for the ignorant.” People choose to believe in them, and some people take them very seriously. In Twain’s novel superstition is viewed by Huck and Jim like a part of their life. Twain shows superstition throughout the novel by showing examples of how several people normally don’t notice superstitions
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unless something comes out of it. Huck kills a spider in the candle, when Jim states that it’s ‘bad luck’ to touch snakeskin but, ‘good luck’ if you have a hairy chest and hairy arms. One example of superstition that really sticks out, is when Huck kills a spider.
Huck announces that, “Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle”(3). Huck knows that it is bad luck so he does certain things to keep the bad luck off. He also states, “I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with thread to keep the witches away” (4). Huck tries to keep the bad luck off because he believes that if he doesn’t try then something bad will happen. Sure enough Huck’s father comes back to town, Huck thinks that he came back due to his ‘bad luck’. If Huck’s father had not come back to town this superstition would’ve been forgotten about and Huck would forget about the so called ‘bad luck’ that he brought into his …show more content…
life. Another example of how Twain expresses superstition is when Jim tells huck that it is bad luck to touch snakeskin. Once again, Jim and Huck go to extreme measures just to make sure that their bad luck is taken care of. Huck states, “Jim told me to chop off the snake’s head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrists, too” (53) After this event nothing happened to Huck and Jim. Therefore, the superstition was forgotten about and nothing atrocious happened because of how they ate the snakeskin and tied the rattles around their wrists etc. Twain also expresses the theme of superstition through good luck versus back luck.
Some superstitions can give you good luck and then you won’t have to worry about keeping the bad luck off. It was stated by Jim that if you had a hairy arms and a hairy chest that you would be rich one day. Jim expresses, “Ef you’s got hairy arms en a hairy breas’ it’s a sign dat you’s a-gwyne to be rich” (45). This worked out in a way for Jim because his view of money is significantly different from others, and he views money by what he is worth. Jim also states soon after he explains the superstition to Huck that he is rich. Jim also states, “Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo” (47). Jim’s perspective of money is about how much he is worth; he believes in this superstition. The superstition would not have been noticed if nothing good ever came from it.
To conclude, Mark Twain shows the theme of superstition by showing us that mankind won’t notice a superstition unless something comes of it. If a superstition is said to cause bad luck nobody would notice the good luck you received. If one was said to give you good luck, the bad luck you received was just misfortune. Most of the time, society doesn’t think of superstitions very highly. It is something to bamboozle your mind and put you on edge until you forget about the bad or good ‘luck’ that isn’t going to
come.
This part is actually ironic, because Jim is black, and Huck is white, and Jim has helped Huck a lot, possibly to the extent of saving his life. This is ironic because normally, a white person wouldn’t take the help of a black person.
One of the oldest problems of humanity is the contradiction between beliefs and actions. The Shepardsons and the Grangerfords act out this contradiction in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Contradictions One of the oldest problems of humanity is the contradiction between beliefs and actions. The Shepardsons and the Grangerfords act out this contradiction in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Although these families attend church and pay lip service to the teachings of the church, they do not live by these teachings.
Huck finds out that all of the bad things he did are coming back to haunt him. In chapter 31 when Jim gets sold for forty dollars, Huck realizes that “here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time whilst from up there in heaven.'; It also scared Huck because all this karma, what comes around goes around, was happening to him.
With this trick, “Huck tries to fool Jim by convincing him that he is only dreaming” (McCullough), making Jim scared and panicked. Jim becomes furious with Huck once he tells him that it was only a trick. This trick, however, “that threatens to break Huck’s ties with Jim actually strengthens them” (Evans, “Trickster” 4):
Throughout literature and novels we can find authors who will reference history, other authors works and most often the Bible. One may ask themselves the reasoning behind allusions and how it can affect our perspective and the authors meaning when reading the novel. In the late sixties, Julia Kristeve, who studied the elements of literature and other communication systems, introduced the word “Intertextuality”. In Kristave’s essay “Word, Dialogue, and Novel” she went into deep analysis of an authors work and its text, “A literary work, then, is not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the strucutures of language itself. Any text," she argues, "is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text
Life on land was filled with many difficulties. There were many rules that Huck had to follow set by both the widow and his father. The widow’s main goal was to “civilize” Huck into a member of society. She expected Huck to go to school, wear clean clothes, sleep in his bed, and go to church. She just wanted him to be like a normal child of his age. Even though Huck bends the rules a bit and tries to sneak a smoke here and there, he eventually grows to like living under the widow’s protection. He proves this point when he says, "Living in a house, and sleeping in a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a littl...
Huck then decides to fake his death which is a form of lying. In an ideal society, an abused child would go to a higher authority and turn in the cold-hearted parent. Sadly, Huck's society is not like this and consequently feels as if everyone abandoned him. Because of this, he had to take his life into his own hands and fend for himself. Huck has to lie to get out of this threatening and unsafe situation. Huck decided the best solution would be to fake his own death. This ends up being to Huck's advantage when he leaves with Jim. Another example when Huck lies to protect himself was when he first came out of hiding dresses as a girl. The reason for Huck coming out of hiding was because he was bored and wanted to hear the town gossip. The logic behind Huck dressing up as a girl is so no one recognizes him. He goes to this house and sees an old woman and thinks that she looks like a lady who tells gossip. When asked his name, he lied and responded that his name was Sarah Williams. The old woman whose name was Judith started to figure out as they were talking that "Sarah Williams" is not who she really says she
In his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses nature not only as ally, but as a deterrent in Huck Finn's search for independence and Jim's search for freedom. The most prominent force of nature in the novel was the Mississippi River. The river was not only their escape route, but perhaps it became their biggest enemy because it was always unpredictable. Nature is the strongest factor in the novel because in a completely different geographical setting the story would have had not only a different outcome, but Huck and Jim might never have found friendship and freedom. Twain changes his tone when describing the Mississippi River from wry and sarcastic to flowing and daydreaming. This change in tone illustrates his own appreciation for the beauty and significance that nature holds for him.
Huck Finn, a narcissistic and unreliable young boy, slowly morphs into a courteous figure of respect and selflessness. After Pap abducts the young and civilized Huck, Huck descends into his old habits of lies and half-truths. However, upon helping a runaway slave escape, Huck regains morality and a sense of purpose. Throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck lies to characters, casting the authenticity of the story into doubt but illustrating Huck’s gradual rejection of lying for himself and a shift towards lying for others.
...t from Jim, including many nature items dealing with superstition. Near the end of the story, Huck thought of Jim as an equal and was very disappointed with the people around him who didn’t think the same way. When Jim would always help out in a bad situation, he showed truly who he was and that the color of your skin doesn’t matter. A doctor in the South even recognized that receiving help is a good thing, even if it is from the opposite color. Black people, especially Jim, gained a reputation that “he ain’t a bad nigger,” (Twain 253) after always going the extra mile to help out. The difference, and major opposites, of skin color definitely influenced Huck’s life. The experience of dealing with diverse people made him more knowledgeable and tolerable. Even though dealing with the problem in society was hard at times, Huck and Jim were still very close friends.
On February 10, in chapter nine and ten, Huck and Jim have developed somewhat of a friendship. They hide the canoe in a cavern; just in a case there were visitors that had dropped by. Unfortunately, it rains very hard, and the two hide in the cavern. The two find a washed-out houseboat, they find a dead body in the house, the body had been shot in the back. While heading back to the cave, Huck has Jim hide in the canoe, so he would not be seen. The next day, Huck puts a dead rattlesnake near Jim's sleeping place, and its mate comes and bites Jim. Jim's leg swells. A while later, Huck decides to go ashore and to find out what's new. Jim agrees, but has Huck disguise himself as a girl, with one of the dresses they took from the houseboat. Huck practices his girl impersonation, and then sets out for the Illinois shore. In an abandoned shack, he finds a woman who looks forty, and also appears a newcomer. Huck is relieved she is a newcomer, since she will not be able to recognize him. The two characters share a few important traits in common. One of the most obvious similarities is their confidence in superstition, though superstition was also a part of the society in which they lived, where people thought cannon balls and loaves of bread with mercury could find drowned corpses. The two are from “civilization” and more generally the white upper class world. Of course, Jim’s background is much deeper than Huck's. As an African American, he simply is less a part of it. Jim's freedom is endangered by that world; he must hide himself during the day so that he is not taken back to it. Journal Entry 6
The book Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, has many themes that appear throughout the text. One such theme is that people must live outside of society to be truly free. If one lives outside of society, then they do not have to follow all of its laws and try to please everyone. They would not be held back by the fact that if they do something wrong, they would be punished for doing it.
Twain’s skeptical take on religion can be elicited because superstition is a theme that both Huck and Jim bring up several times. Although both of these characters tend to be quite rational, they quickly become irrational when anything remotely superstitious happens to them. The role of superstition in this book is two-fold: First, it shows that Huck and Jim are child-like in spite of their otherwise extremely mature characters. Second, it serves to foreshadow the plot at several key junctions. For example, spilling salt leads to Pa returning for Huck, and later Jim gets bitten by a rattlesnake after Huck touches a snakeskin with his hands.
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain shows how ridiculous it is to follow society’s corrupt beliefs just because everyone else is. Twain uses the protagonist, Huck’s, adventures as he grows and matures to show this corruption. Huck goes against societal norms to do what he feels is right, even if society says it will send him to Hell. To get this message across, Twain uses frequent examples of satire to show the hypocrisy and corruption within society’s ideals. These satirical examples especially emphasize religion, education, and slavery. This coming-of-age story points out the many flaws within society in a humorous, yet truthful manner.
The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an extremely important work of literature that addresses many world problems such as: poverty, race relations, and our role in society. Although some of these issues are not as prevalent today as they were in the 1880s, the novel still sends an important satirical message to anyone who is willing hear this story. This essay will analyze Huckleberry Finn and its relation to society today; the main issues that are addressed include: Huckleberry’s growth as a moral and upstanding person, race relations between African-Americans and Caucasian-Americans including Huck’s relation to Jim and the issue of slavery, the role of society and an analysis of Huck’s role in society and society’s role in Huckleberry’s personality.