Examples Of Superstition In Huckleberry Finn

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Now superstitions have affected people's lives for ages. Superstitions really shine in the story of Huckleberry Finn. Chapter one already gives you a good glimpse of superstitions. For example, Huckleberry Finn flicked a spider off of his arm and it went straight into a candle's flame. This is apparently bad luck and he did various good luck charms to ward off the bad luck. From this amount of information you can tell superstitious affects a lot of peoples lives.

In the story of Huckleberry Finn, Huck becomes friends with a colored slave named Jim. This is the most superstitious person you will ever meet! Jim’s whole life revolves around these good and bad luck superstitions. A great example of his strong belief in superstitions occurs in Chapter nine. On page sixty, Jim says, “It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er …show more content…

Although Huck is not as superstitious as Jim can be at times. Huck’s superstitious behaviors are shown right in the very first chapter. When Huck was awake in the night a spider climbed on his arm and he accidently flicked it into the fire of a candle. Apparently, this is bad luck because he quickly began a few good luck rituals to get rid of the bad luck. Both Huck and Jim also believe that looking at a dead body will bring bad luck in chapter nine when they both find Huck’s dead father. Huck is unaware of this and so is Jim.

Now from all these superstitions we can tell the Mark Twain knew a lot about superstitions. Sadly it is unknown if Mark Twain was, in fact, a very superstitious person. Back then and today there are so many superstitions. Their reason there was a lot more in the past was because there was little data to prove that they were untrue. Mark Twain though did his fair amount of research on some of these absurd superstitions because many of them are true and were very much so believed for a long