The way in which friendship supersedes superstition and popular beliefs plays a major role throughout. Huck in particular is forced to mature and forget superstition when he is faced with the internal dilemma of his best friend, Jim, being a runaway slave.

In Chapter one, Huck sees a spider crawling up his shoulder, so he flicks it into the flame of a candle, where it shrivles up before he could retrieve it. Huck realizes that it is a bad omen, which will bring bad luck. He becomes scared and shakes off his clothes, then proceeds to turn in his tracks three times. He then ties 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. He then goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim goes and gets a fist sized hairball, which was taken from a

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).

Throughout the novel we see Huck struggling to resolve his mixed feelings and emotions with regard to Jim and to the world in which he is growing up. On the one hand, he has become engrained with very primitive ideas or superstitions, which tend to persist even alongside the religious beliefs of the community around him. Also, although not directly mentioned in the book, Huck seems to constantly struggle with the issue of whether or not to return Jim to the widow. He seems to feel instinctively that slavery is wrong - this is implied by the very fact of his running away with Jim. However, he constantly questions whether or not it would be better for both of them to return home - home to normal life but not to end his friendship with Jim.

"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

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Approximate Word count = 988
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)