Another Huckleberry Finn Essay, Research Paper
Superstition in
Huck Finn 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 an 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."(Twain 5). 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
gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sil in en
gust it all up. A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetch
him at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to have
considable trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes
you 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 gals
flyin’ ’bout yo’ in yo’ life. One uv ‘em’s light en t’other one is
dark. One is rich en t’other is po’. You’s gwyne to marry de
po’ 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 that
night and Pap is there. In Chapter ten, Huck and Jim run into
good luck and bad luck. The good luck was Huck and Jim
finds eight dollars in the pocket of an overcoat. After dinner
on Friday, they are lying in the grass, then Huck ran out of
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 peice of it. He took
the rattles off and tied them to Jim 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." (Twain 52). 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.