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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.
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 heel. Jim tells Huck to chop off the snake's head, and to then skin the body of the snake. They then decide to cook part of it, and eat it. Huck decides that he will be nice to Jim, and try and make him feel better about the snakebite, so he takes the rattles off and ties them to Jim wrist as a bracelet. Jim said it would help him, and to this Huck narrates to the readers, "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). Throughout the novel we ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 972
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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