Essay/Term paper: Another huckleberry finn

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Huckleberry Finn

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.