In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain portrays Jim and Huck as superstitious characters. Throughout the novel the role of superstition plays an important role in the lives of these two characters. Although Jim and Huck or totally different characters they both portray the similar quality of superstition. .
Jim believes a great deal in superstition. " Jim, had a hairball as big as your fist He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything"(Twain 21). The spirit inside would talk to Jim and give him answers to what he needed to know. Huck new that Pap was back and wanted to ask Jim what he was going to do and if he was going to stay. So Jim took out the hairball said something over it and dropped it to the floor then but his ear to it and listened. Nothing happened until Jim slipped a counterfeit quarter under it and it started to talk to Jim. The spirit told Jim that Pap would be appearing soon, which evidentially soon enough he did.
As well as Jim, Huck is a superstitious character as well. " awful bad sign would fetch bad luck turned around in my tracks three times and crosses my breast every time, then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away" (Twain 6). A spider crawled on him and he flicked it off. He thinks its bad luck to hurt a spider. He had to do all of this to get rid of the "bad luck".
When Jim and Huck are on the island superstition changed the way they would normally do certain things. Jim knows all about good and bad signs. "And Jim said your mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if your shook the tablecloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a bee-hive, and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next mourning, or else the bees will would all weaken down and quit work and die"(Twain 54). This is when Jim and Huck are on the island and these are just some of the signs that Jim believes in.
