Theme Of Superstition In Huckleberry Finn

In the American classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, a young boy named Huck and a slave named Jim are faced with danger while they travel down the Mississippi River. The pair, Huck and Jim, must overcome obstacles and challenges after Huck faked death and left town and Jim became a runaway slave. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the theme, even though many often try, with good intentions, the results tend to work against them, is developed with the motifs of superstition, childhood, and lies and deciet. The motif of superstition is so evident and important that Mark Twain even dedicated a chapter to it - Chapter 4: Huck and the Judge - Superstition. On page 13, “Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, …show more content…
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer have a bond, one that only kids can have. As very good friends, and previous adventure partners, the two of them try to create a gang, the “Tom Sawyer Gang.” On page 12, though, “We played robber now and then for about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did.” This quote shows how the boys wanted to be cool and play games, but they had the good hearts to not do anything to actually hurt anyone. Naturally, as children, their intentions were to be cool, which involved possibly hurting others, but their morals would not allow. Often, adults will make decisions for a child, but sometimes the results do not help the child and only begin to hurt them. For example, on page 30, “The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know the old man; so he said courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he’d druther not take a child away from its father.” While Huck is with Pap, Huck gets beaten and abused, both verbally and physically. The new judge wanted to try to keep the family together, but he did not know the harm that would come from his decision. The Judge’s good intentions of trying to keep the family together only …show more content…
In contrast, the king and the duke manage many lies and cons with only the hope of great results for themselves, often ending badly for others around them. For example, on pages 40-41, “I took the ax and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerable a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the ax, and laid him down on the ground to bleed.” This quote shows how Huck Finn faked his own death - lying about it. He tricked the whole town into believing that he was dead. Huck had good intentions in the sense that Pap was hurting him and he was trying to protect himself. The action that Huck took, killing a pig and using its blood to look like he died, not only framed both Pap and Jim but creates a difficult situation for him to get out of if he were to go back into town. On page 67, Huck goes into town to find out news about his death, “If this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn’t forget I was a girl.” Jim suggests that Huck dress up as a girl so he can go to town to find out any news, and, of course, Huck agrees. With a dress on, Huck goes into a small store with a middle aged woman at the counter. He finds out that the townspeople believe that either Pap Finn or Jim killed Huck, and there