Huck Finn

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Superstitions in Huckleberry Finn

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 Chapter one Huck sees a spider crawling up his shoulder, so
he flipped it off and it went into the flame of the candle. Before he
could get it out, it was already shriveled up. Huck didn't need
anyone to tell him that it was an bad sign and would give him bad
luck. Huck got scared and shook his clothes off, and turned in his
tracks three times. He then tied 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 it 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. So
Huck goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim gets a hair-ball
that is the size of a fist that he took from an ox's stomach. Jim
asks the hair-ball; Why is Pap here? But the hair-ball won't answer.
Jim says it needs money, so Huck gives Jim a counterfeit quarter.
Jim puts the quarter under the hair-ball. The hair-ball talks to Jim
and Jim tells Huck that it says. "Yo'ole father doan' know yit what
he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den ag'in he
spec he'll stay. De bes' way is tores' easy en let de ole man take
his own way. Dey's two angles hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv'em is
white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him to go
right a little while, den de black one sil in en gust it all up. A
bo...