In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, superstition plays a key role to the story. During that time period, superstitions were almost held sacred to an extent, even though they had been made up to scare little children from doing bad things. Superstition plays a key role in three parts of the story; the spider scene in chapter one, the hairball incident in chapter four, and the snake scene in chapter ten.

             Superstition first brings itself into play in chapter one. This scene sets the tone of bad luck for the rest of the story. "Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle," (13). This is the beginning of bad luck for Huck, he has violated one of the gravest of "old wives tales." Killing a spider in that time period meant bad luck was coming very soon. "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." Huck was scared of the impending bad luck from the death of the spider, so he did everthing in his superstitious power to stop it. Then there is another scene superstition plays a key role in.

             In chapter four, Huck sees Pap's footprints in the snow. Huck then goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim retrieves 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?" The hair-ball doesn"t answer. Jim says that the hair-ball needs money, so Huck gives Jim a counterfeit quarter. Jim puts the quarter under the hair-ball and 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.