Examples Of Superstition In Huck Finn

In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the theme of superstition is obviously portrayed in both views of Jim and Huck. Huck shows his beliefs in superstition throughout the entire novel, but especially in the beginning. Between Huck And Jim, Jim is by far the most superstitious. Huckleberry Finn is superstitious out of terror, while Jim is superstitious out of beliefs and his education. Huck and Jim have different point of views on how they see superstition.

The vast majority of people try to fit into their surroundings; conformity is a huge part of society and, in a way, it is the basis of society. To conform is to adhere to widely held ideas in order to fit in, and everyone does it their own way. Novels, both old and new, often focus on characters who are outside of social norms and show how they interact with society in their own way. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, who was born in 1835 and died in 1910 as one of the most famous American authors. The novel is about a young boy by the name of Huckleberry Finn, also known as Huck, who helps a slave, Jim, escape to freedom along the Mississippi River during the 1830s-1840s. Throughout his book, Huckleberry Finn faces many challenges

In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, there is a lot of superstition. Some examples of superstition in the novel are Huck killing a spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball used to tell fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin Huck touches that brings Huck and Jim good and bad luck. Superstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn.

In the first chapter of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is stuck in a "sivilized" world, when he would certainly prefer to live free. He ends up moving in with the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. The widow changes his clothing and makes him learn the bible. Huck disliked the clothing very much saying “She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel cramped up.” (156) Ironically, the widow will not allow him to smoke even though she secretly uses snuff. Miss Watson thinks he should get an education and takes it upon herself to teach him spelling and proper behavior. Huckleberry finds spelling very difficult to learn and hates her lectures so much that he decides that Hell has got to better than Heaven. He states, “Well I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it.” (156) With this reference Twain is reminding us as the reader, of Huckleberry’s childhood innocence. A child would choose hell over heaven.

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a variety of people influence Huck’s ideology. From the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson’s religious rhetoric to Pap’s brutal, uncivilized manner, many contrasting ideas shape Huck’s belief system. However, among these people, Tom Sawyer holds the greatest impact over Huck’s actions and mentality because of Huck’s immense admiration for him. Huck’s initial encounters with Tom Sawyer establish Tom as a major component of the ideology Huck maintains throughout his journey. Despite Huck’s skepticism and confusion about Tom’s imaginative schemes, Huck regards Tom’s judgements as the truth and follows all of Tom’s plans.

In Huckleberry Finn there are several themes. There are themes of racism and slavery, civilized society, survival, water imagery, and the one I will be discussing, superstition ( SparkNotes Editors). Superstition is a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation (“Merriam-Webster”). Superstition was a very popular theme in Huckleberry Finn that you saw throughout the story. Huck was somewhat superstitious, but Jim speaks a wide range of superstition and folk tales. In the story it makes Jim seem as if he is unintelligent, when really his superstitions and beliefs come true and shows he

Life is full of superstition, whether you like it or not everybody has some sort of superstition in them. Some people don’t let some things go to their head like others do. Some people can get really stubborn if something suspicious happens. I am one of them people, it is really hard to get suspicion out of your head, it is one of them things that once you do it, it is hard to not have those thoughts in your head. And in the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn you will see the cause and effects of the use of suspicion. The main character, Huck Finn, used superstition as a means to keep him going in search of his true self and find interesting ways to live life the only way he knew.

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, gives an eye opening view of the South during this time period through the eyes of Huck and Jim. Huck and Jim are very unlikely friends but become friends never the less and share many experiences on the river together. The two influence each other in more ways than one and may not even realize they do. They both have their own opinions and views although society heavily impacts them. Society’s view on racism is Huck’s view on racism because that is what he was brought up to be. The society has a powerful effect to smother problems such as slavery and racism. Huck being brought up in a society that ingrains racism in to you as a child is struggling to decide what is morally right and wrong to do and who will hopefully realize Jim's humanity at the end of the novel (Culture Shock).While talking to Huck, Aunt Sally projects "It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head." "Good gracious! anybody hurt?" "No'm. Killed a nigger." "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people

This is like the things the people in the books he reads does. Tom secretly doesn't know what he is doing and goes off of fictional books. Huck also falls into superstition during the beginning of the book. Jim believed that "witches bewitched him" (Twain, 13) and had took him and flown around the world. He shares this story to many however, this story is not true.

Widow Douglas is a who takes care of Huck, she is a nice woman who loves and treats him like her son. Huck’s response to the Moses story is changes because in the beginning he was very interested in it and he wanted to know more about Moses until Widow Douglas revealed that Moses had been dead the whole story. After that Huck stopped caring for Moses and his story. What this tells the reader about Huck is that he doesn’t like when things end in death.

Some say that superstition is an impractical way of looking at life but the characters in Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn beg to differ. Examples of superstition are abundant throughout the novel. Allowing characters in a novel to have superstitions makes their lives more realistic and the reading more enjoyable. Huck and Jim’s superstitions cause them grief, help them get through, and sometimes get them into trouble in their lengthy runaway journey. Although both of these characters tend to be quite rational, they quickly become irrational when anything remotely superstitious happens to them. Superstition plays a dual role: it shows that Huck and Jim are child-like in spite of their otherwise

Knock on wood; an apple a day keeps the doctor away; a rabbit’s foot is good luck— these are all expressions heard on a daily basis. Throughout life, society has based many of its actions on superstitious beliefs. A superstition is a belief in something without any factual basis or proof behind it. It can be used to explain events, or for some people, even predict the future. Mark Twain is famous for his criticism of people’s absurd use of superstitions as explanations for unusual phenomenons. In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes the superstitious beliefs of the time period and how heavily they were relied upon in everyday life to explain

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn superstition appears extensively. The superstition allows the main character, a young boy named Huck, to learn through experience, but it also resembles a religion for him and Jim. Superstition remain in the thoughts of Huck no matter what he goes through. When he makes a wrong decision Jim usually alerts him about a superstition and he learns something new from the experience. Superstition creates a solid foundation for everything done in the book.

The use of superstition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain makes the novel more interesting. It adds character depth, gives reasons for the actions of the characters, and drives the plot. It also makes the story a bit more humorous for the reader. Superstition, both good and bad, is a large part of this novel. This is true especially when it comes to the characters, and the way they interact with their surroundings and each other.

During the 1880s, which was the time The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was composed, blacks were commonly stereotypically made fun of through the advent of Minstrelsy shows, which began in the 1830s. The white actors would preform in “blackfaces”, in which they would carry out comic routines that poked racist fun at blacks, portraying them as lazy, ignorant and irresponsible (318 Henretta). The combination of Minstrelsy shows and everyday racism towards blacks during the time this novel was written profoundly influenced Mark Twain. Mark Twain throughout the novel portrays Jim and other blacks stereotypically. This is evident in Chapter II, when Tom and Huck play a prank on Jim while he is sleeping near Miss Watson’s window (portrays blacks as lazy) by taking his hat off. Once Jim wakes up and tells all of his fellow slaves that witches took his hat, thus portraying Jim as ignorant (Twain 109-110). Throughout the entire novel, Jim is portrayed as superstitious and practically