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* * * 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. * * * Written by: Eri Erica.Hankinson@juno.com
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