The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn: Superstition Essay, Research Paper

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Superstition

Superstistion, a word that is often used to explain bad luck, misfortune,

the super natural, and the world that is not known. In the novel The Adventures

of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, superstion playe an important role that

resurfaces several times throughout the book. A belief that a hair ball can tell

the future, a loaf of bread containing quicksilver can point out a dead carcass,

and touching a snake skin with bare hands will give you the worst bad luck, are

all examples of some of the superstitons found in the book.

“Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hairball as big as your fist, which had

been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it.

He said there was a spirit inside of it and it knowed everything.” This quote,

taken from chapter four of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a great

example of how superstitius the people of the time were. The hairball’s

signifigance to the novel is seen in both the characters of Jim and Huck. Jim is

an uneducated slave who does not have much knowledge. He is very ignorant and is

easy to beleive things things. Not only does his beleif that this hairball has

magic spirits, he is also fooled by Huck many times during the novel. You would

think because of him being an uneducated slave, and Huck being the white boy who

has had some schooling, that their beleifs in this superstitous hairball would

differ. This is not true as seen when Huck is the one that comes to Jim for the

powers of the Hairball. Huck wanted to know what his father, Pap, was going to

do. Huck had found out earlier that Pap was back in Town. Both Huck and Jim are

very superstisoius as most of the people were then. There was not a lot of the

modern technologies that we have today to prove many superstitions false. The

hairball really does not tell Huck anything that he really already did not know.

It only told him that his father did not know what to do. It only told him

general things such as, you are going to get hurt ,but then you will get better.

This episode with the hairball shows that even though Huck has some sort of an

education, he and Jim may be more similar than either one would admit.

Another superstition that most all of the people then beleived had to do

with a loaf of bread and some quicksilver. ?I only had a bite to eat. Well, then

I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float

them off, beacuse they always go right to the drownded carcass.? Luckkily for

this superstition a loaf of bread happened to float right by him, and he had

breakfast. Since the bread did in dead float to him, mabey the old belief had

some truth in it. After all, he was really supposed to be dead and the bread did

seek him out. This episode furth illustrated the point that most all of the

people were superstitous. The whole town beleived the loaves would find the body.

Again, they had no way of knowing why it would work or why it would not. If you

put enough loaves of bread out there, one of them is bound to find a cracass

somewhere. Huck finding the bread really helped move the novel along. If he had

not been able to get the bread to eat, he might have left the shore in seek of

food. If this had happened there would never have been a seen where he sees all

of town on the steambote seearching for his dead body. A final point to this

episode it the widow and here parying. During most of the book, Huck did not

beleive praying did much of anyhting at all. After all, he had prayed for many

things in the past and never got them. This time he though maybe there actually

was something to the praying of the widow. ?I says, now I reckon the widow