The first example of a negative superstition takes place at Hannibal, Missouri when Huck flicks a spider off his shoulder and it gets burned in a candle’s flame. That was a sign of bad luck, so Huck counteracts the bad luck by turning around three times and then he ties a lock of hair with thread to keep the witches away.
There are number of examples of superstitions mentioned in chapter eight. After Huck leaves Jackson Island and goes to the Illinois shore he meets Jim. Some young birds fly over them in a formation and Jim tells Huck that it is a sign of rain. This is a neutral example of a superstition. Negative examples of superstitions mentioned in the chapter are when Huck wants to catch one of the birds but Jim tells him not to because catching a bird causes death. Jim also says not to count the things that are going to be cooked and not to shake the tablecloth after sundown because they bring bad luck.
A positive example in chapter eight is when Jim tells Huck that having hairy arms and a hairy chest means that the person is going to be rich. Huck notices that Jim has Hairy arms and a hairy chest so he comments on it. Jim tells Huck that he used to be rich because he used to have $14. A negative example is when Jim tells Huck that if a man owns a beehive and the man dies, someone has to tell the bees about the death before sun up the next morning or else the bees will stop working and die.
In chapter nine, Huck and Jim find a dead man in a house that was floating down the river. Huck does not look at the man’s face because Jim tells him not to. In the next chapter Huck wants to talk about the dead man but Jim does not want to because he says it would bring bad luck.
In the same chapter, Huck kills a rattlesnake that he finds in a cavern and, as a joke, puts it on the foot of Jim’s blanket. Huck forgot that when there is a dead snake its mate comes and curls up around it. So when Jim lies down to go to sleep, the mate bites Jim on the heel. Jim tells Huck to cut off the head of the mate and cook the body because it would help cure the bite. He also tells Huck to take the rattle off the snake and put it on Jim’s wrist to help cure him. Jim scares Huck by telling him that it is bad luck to handle snakeskin. Huck probably believes that the snake brings bad luck because Jim got bit.
Superstitions may or may not be real and different people have different superstitions. However, they are real to those who believe them and they are unreal to those who do not. In this book, Miss Watson did not believe that spilling salt brought bad luck so she got angry when Huck threw some of the salt he spilled over his left shoulder to avoid the bad luck from spilling the salt. Obviously, Huck believed this superstition or he would not have thrown he salt. Some superstitions are passed down from generation to generation, but others are the result of a person connecting one event to another. For example, Jim believes that catching a bird brings death because his father died after someone caught a bird. For Huck, all the bad luck that him and Jim had came from handling the snakeskin.
