Huck Fin
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 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. 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. Ji
A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. He seems to feel instinctively that slavery is wrong - this is implied by the very fact of his running away with Jim. The hairball talks to Jim and Jim tells Huck that it says: "Yo'ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Also, although not directly mentioned in the book, Huck seems to constantly struggle with the issue of whether or not to return Jim to the widow. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Later, when night comes, Jim sits down on the blanket and the snake's mate is there. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den ag'in he spec he'll stay. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout yo' in yo' life. Jim says it needs money, so Huck gives Jim a counterfeit quarter that Huck had been bragging about earlier in the novel. 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. When Huck goes home and finds Pa there, it re-enforces his belief in the occult and also his trust in his friend Jim. The spider episode, the hairball, and the rattlesnake were given as justifiable examples of why the escapade was doomed to failure by bad luck - all of this played out without a direct reference to the "badness" or evil of slavery itself. m asks the hairball, "Why is Pap here?" But the hairball won't answer. While snooping around in an overcoat, Huck and Jim find eight dollars in one of the pockets.
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