Huck Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain contains symbolism associated with superstition. This is demonstrated by both the actions and beliefs of the characters and the events which occur in the story. 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 i!t 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 an ox's stomach.
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. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is filled with symbolism associated with the superstitious beliefs of the South at the time of slavery. The spider episode, the hairball, and the rattlesnake were given as justifiable examples of why the escapade was doomed to failu! iday, they are lying in the grass, when Huck runs out of tobacco. He decides to go to the cavern to get some, and finds a rattlesnake. In southern culture it is "bad luck" to touch the skin of a rattlesnake, however Huck kills it anyway, and rolls it up to its original shape and puts it on the foot of Jim's blanket as a decoration. Later, when night comes, Jim sits down on the blanket and the snake's mate is there. It lunges out, and it bites Jim on the
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Approximate Word count = 969
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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