“My, but we’re rich, Tom!” Huckleberry Finn says after taking a glimpse of the treasure-box (Twain 240-241). When looked from afar, the small town in Missouri seems slow, boring, and awfully religious, but Tom Sawyer, the protagonist, finding treasure is one of the many instances where even a small town is full of adventure. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is a fictional novel that highlights some of the experiences that the author had as a boy. It is a novel about boyhood during an era before American industrialization, emphasized when Twain concludes the story with, “It being strictly a history of a boy, [the chronicle] must stop here,” (Twain 253). In the novel, Mark Twain uses folklore and superstition, mischief and humor, and …show more content…
For example, in a main plot point in the story, Huckleberry Finn has bought a dead cat that will supposedly cure warts by taking it to the graveyard at midnight and chanting, “Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I’m done with ye!” (Twain 54-55) Tom objects by arguing that he has a real solution by sticking your hand in a tree stump full of rain water and reciting a chant, then doing a series of steps and movements that will shrink the wounds. Twain emphasizes the silliness and the length of performing these superstitious rituals. It all goes back to the fact that, unlike adults, only boys and girls believe these charms. The reason warts are a problem in the first place is because they are associated with witches and the devil. The chant Huck plans to use with the dead cat shows this connection. Witches are portrayed negatively throughout the book, known to cast curses and interfere with superstitious charms. Huck’s “old Mother Hopkins” that told him about the dead cat superstition was revealed as a witch, known to mumble the Lord’s prayer backwards and cause Huck’s drunken dad to break his arm the night she “witched” him (Twain 55). There is an episode where Tom Sawyer blames witches because his marble-seeking charm failed. …show more content…
The book features this mischief exclusive to boyhood. Tom’s mischief includes what any other boy would have done, but there are also instances where he takes advantage of human tendency. For example, when Tom is set by Aunt Polly to whitewash, he comes up with an interesting way to manipulate others into doing it for him by making the work not seem like work at all. Soon he is getting paid to sit back and watch people do it for him, all because he discovers that, “…to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” (Twain 21) Here, the author makes humor of human psychology. Another example Twain exposes humans’ follies and mischiefs is in chapter four, when Tom gathers enough tickets for a Dore Bible, an achievement that only the finest spiritual scholars receive (Twain 29-40). Getting a Dore Bible might cause people to assume that Tom is faithful to his church, but the chapter shows how disengaged and resentful Tom – and the other boys and girls - was to church service, thus shows its weekly routine in a more sarcastic light. Tom and the other children can’t help but include their child-like mischief into the sermon, which shows that even as organized as religion is, it just cannot tame the children (Twain 35). The book portrays church service as a boring, routine event that everyone merely shows up to, as stated, “It is not
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.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel about youths, but reviews great truths and philosophy of the society. The book is too profound for children to understand the moral. He uses a view of a child to express the humor of the implication of youth’s behavior, the ironic religious events, and hypocritical society. a. The implication of Youth’s behaviors As the whole story was told by the voice of a teenager, their behaviors were also implicated Mark Twain’s language of humor.
How does Twain incorporate humor through point of view in this chapter? Twain applies satire in Huck’s point of view to create humor by making Huck act against societal norms. What evidence of Huck’s own superstitious nature does Twain show the reader at the end of the chapter?
In the prime first half of the book, the author explicates that Tom Sawyer is extremely childish and immature at numerous times throughout the inception of the novel. The readers can lucidly see this even in the first chapter, in which Tom encounters an elaborate, new boy in town and “In an instant, both boys were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats. . . ” (Twain, 81). Tom also fascinates himself with unconventional things such as: “a large black beetle-pinchbug”, “dead cat”, “doorknobs”, and “a tick”. Furthermore, Tom also tends to do foolish and obviate things in attempts to achieve something and then realizes that these endeavors fail. A definite factor in the development of Tom’s mischievous nature is that his parents
Superstition, excessively credulous belief in and reverence for supernatural beings. Throughout this novel, the beliefs and superstitions of both black and white characters are showcased. How Mark Twain portrayal of both cultures contributes to the overall meaning of work is by using superstitions in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to present that violent beliefs people have, such as the color of a human beings skin, defines who they truly are, this prevents people from leaving their own comfort zones and growing up as a person.
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
A boring lifestyle is never appealing to an imaginative child. In Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Tom is a young child who dreams of an exciting and adventurous life outside his small town. Although while his dreams become more and more ambitious so does his reality. The sudden change in events soon begin to change Tom’s life. As Tom’s small town attracts a criminal everything Tom wishes for begins to come true only in a corrupt way that he never imagined. With all new to keep up with Tom is forced to mature and develop as a character along with those around by leaving behind his childish games and accepting reality. Twain uses character development in Tom and Huck Finn to create unique and special characters.
During the latter nineteenth century, the famous author Mark Twain, less commonly known as Samuel Clemens, produced The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A few years prior to the publishing of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain released possibly his most famous book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which is very much an adventure novel. In the early chapters of Twain’s sequel, it appears that¬¬¬¬ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is another adventure novel, and that it is just following a different character from Twain’s earlier world of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, it is quickly realized that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in fact not an adventure book for the youth, but a much more mature story with a large amount of symbolism and satire. This novel by Mark Twain follows the life of a young boy, Huckleberry Finn, as he rides down the mighty Mississippi River on a makeshift raft. Along the way, the boy runs into many various challenges, or episodes, which seem to hinder his progress down the Mississippi. Deep satirical and symbolical meaning can be found in each of these episodes, as Mark Twain was known to love satire and to enjoy making fun of all aspects of life and society. Many have praised The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a “great American novel” due to many conventional themes that they try to find in Huck’s ‘adventures’. The Adventures of Huckleberry
As you can see here, Huckleberry takes superstition very seriously and tried everything in his power to keep the back luck away. But why does Huck look to superstition compared to a formal religion? It is because he is someone who believes strongly in the evils of the world. This could be his coping mechanism for all the terrible things that has happened to him throughout his life. Between his mother’s death and his father’s alcoholism and abuse tendencies; Huckleberry has not had it easy in his thirteen years of
A hackneyed expression is understood to be that one should never deliberate over religion or politics in specific social settings. Religion is and has always been a topic of serious controversy and indifference. Literature has become a major source of media in which religious sentiments are discussed. The description of one boy, Huck and his adventures allows Mark Twain the chance to convey Huck Finn’s perspective on religion to his readers. In his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses such literary devices as satire, humor, and irony throughout his work to illustrate his distaste for religion and religious practices. In various scenes in the novel, Twain illustrates his animosity towards religion, as normally serious practices are portrayed as comical. Huckleberry Finn, the main character, is either directly involved in these scenarios or otherwise a viewer and subsequent narrator of these humorous events.
Dr. T.P.Chia once assured “Superstition is the death of a thinking mind.” This theme is presented in Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, specifically with one character. As Jim and Huck make the journey for freedom, superstition has a heavy response on characters. Jim spills out most of the superstitions, while Huck doesn’t quite seem to agree with some of them. Tom is a dreamer who seems to go along with the superstition world.
In Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he uses the idea of religion and superstition influences society’s rules for how to live one’s life. Religion is the belief in an overruling power as superstition is believing in the supernatural or the unknown. Both religion and superstition teaches one’s moral values on how to live, although each believe in different ideas. Huckleberry Finn is a child learning to become his own person. He has his own opinions on these ideas which contribute to the choices that he makes in life.
Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer paints a perfect picture of rural life in Mississippi, freedom, and adventure through elements like irony and satire.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is a story of a young, mischievous boy who did not like punishment, school, or church. Tom Sawyer had learned a lot and had matured a lot by the end of the book. As a reader reads this book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer he will see that Tom Sawyer gets into a lot of trouble. Through this paper I hope to teach you that Tom Sawyer grew out of his mischievous ways eventually.
In The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, Tom lives with his Aunt Polly and constantly gets into trouble. He witnesses a murder, goes to an island and pretends he’s a pirate, gets lost in a cave, finds buried treasure, and goes on other amazing adventures. Throughout the novel, Tom Sawyer matures and become more of a man.