Superstition

Is it a sign of immature faith that just as we imagine God as the great puppeteer, we imagine evil forces as something that we can have power over by ritual.

Chapter 1

Huck imagines:

The leaves rustling as mournful.
An owl who-whooing about somebody that was dead.
A whippoorwill...., also signaling that someone is dead.
A dog crying about somebody that was about to die.
The wind whispering something that he couldn't make out.
The woods making a sound that a ghost makes.

He experiences:
A spider is killed and reflects bad luck.

He turns around 3 times.
He ties up a lock of his hair with a thread to keep witches away.
There is no antidote for killing a spider.

As Huck is transformed by love, will this superstition, and the interpretation of the sights and sounds of nature, be transformed as signs of God, not signs of the devil?


Chapter 2

After Tom plays a trip on the sleeping Jim by hanging his hat on a tree branch, Jim builds a narrative that witches came to him and took him away and then put him back and hung the hat on a tree.
So clearly Jim believes in witches and is superstitious as well.

Chapter 8

Huck is presumed dead. Drowned.
How does one find a body that has been drowned in the river?
Not sure whether this is superstition, but the town folks fire a cannon over the water, hoping that it will bring the body up from the bottom. In the footnotes to the chapter, Hearn confirms that this is a superstition, and not scientific. [Chapter 8, footnote 2]
Another superstition, clearly, is the practice of filling a loaf of bread with some quicksilver (mercury) so that it would float near where a body lay. [footnote 3]
This superstition is reported by Huck, so he has shown us that he is just as superstitious as Jim.

Chapter 10

In Chapter 9, Huck and Jim discover a body in a house floating down the river. Jim won't let Huck look at the face. Here is chapter 10, when Huck asks Jim to talk about the dead man, Jim gets out of it by telling Huck it would be bad luck. So here Jim uses superstition to avoid revealing that the body was Pap. Still, Jim may have really believed it was bad luck. But here superstition comes in handy as a way to avoid talking about the truth.

Then, in a second superstition story, Huck reveals that he picked up a snake skin, and Jim assured him it was bad luck. Huck plays a mean trick, putting a dead snake near Jim's blanket, a second snake came and curled around it, and then bit Jim. Huck blames it on bad luck, to avoid taking responsibility. Another example of using superstition as a diversion from the truth.
This leads to more talk: roast a piece of the snake; take off the rattles and wear them; the snake skin curse is not as bad as looking at the new moon over your left shoulder.

Friendship

Chapter 8

It is in this chapter that we first look at the relationship between Huck and Jim.

As I look at the premise that Jim is mentoring Huck in the art of spiritual awakening, I want to be careful not to see that Huck is having a similar affect on Jim. It seems that, in this chapter, Huck is the one who is showing some degree of love, or at least friendship when he encounters Jim, promises not to turn him in, and is concerned that he hasn't eaten anything but strawberries since he arrived on the island.

Looking at the sequence:

Huck remarks, when he first sees that Jim is on the island with him by the campfire:
"I bet I was glad to see him."

Jim, thinking he is seeing a ghost, after asking the ghost to leave him alone, remarks:

'...'at 'uz awluz yo' fren'." (what was always your friend)

Huck proceeds to convince Jim that he isn't dead. This is not Tom Sawyer, who probably would have played along for awhile. We don't see that cruel streak in Huck, and probably won't.

Then he says:
"I was ever so glad to see Jim."
and
"I warn't lonesome, now."
and
"I told him I warn't afraid of him telling the people where I was." The italics are Twain's.

Then there is an exchange about what Jim has eaten, which culminates with Huck's concern:
"Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?"

Huck then proceeds to share all that he has, bacon, sugar, coffee, etc.

So, up until this point the exchange is that Huck is happy to see Jim; he needs companionship. He is happy to share what he has. He is concerned about Jim's hunger. He trusts that Jim won't betray Huck's deception about his fake death.

Why is this? Is there a prior history here? Jim has said that he has always Huck's friend. Or is this the first we see that Huck has a deeper self that sees Jim as a human being? Is Huck falsely pretending to care for Jim because he needs a companion?
I guess I don't buy it. Huck was doing perfectly fine by himself. He doesn't need a companion, or at least we think he doesn't given it's still early in his adventurous escape.
Of course there is the argument that he's glad that Jim is not an enemy. There is relief that Jim is not a stranger. But could that account for such generosity and concern?

Now comes the first test of this 'friendship':

Jim reveals to Huck that he has escaped, and is now a runaway slave.

Jim reminds Huck that just minutes before he has promised to keep what Jim is about to tell him a secret.

Huck says:
"Well I did. I said I wouldn't and I'll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum - but that don't make no difference. I ain't agoing to tell, and I ain't agoing back there anyways."

So we have two ways to look at this:
First, the integrity of giving your word. Huck didn't know what the story was when he promised not to tell. When the story was revealed, a slave that had run away, Huck could have said that even though he promised, the story was sufficiently bad enough that Huck could not keep his promise.

So is Huck keeping his word because he had promised, or is this Huck's first test about what he considers to be an injustice?

First of all, Huck sees his own story here. He has escaped himself, probably from death. He has this in common with Jim now.

And I think more importantly, we already have seen evidence that Huck sees Jim as a fellow human being, concerned for his health. Now he is concerned for his freedom.

It may be too early to draw this conclusion.

Continuing the development of the friendship:

Jim tells the story of his escape. Something Huck can appreciate.
There is more discussion about superstitions.
Jim then tells how he lost his riches ($14) to speculation.

So this long discussion of adventures and life's lessons draws us closer into the companionship that has been revealed.

Finally, there is this statement by Jim after Huck remarks that perhaps Jim will be rich again:

"Yes- en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars." (Miss Watson was going to sell him for that much)

There is a whole basket of emotions in reading that statement. The sadness that a human is valued in dollars. The pride in Jim that he is worth so much. The humor in the juxtaposition of the two.

Chapter 11
Time for Huck to show concern for his friend. When he sneaks away to town dressed as a girl, the old lady in the shack tells him that the town thinks that either Pap or Jim murdered Huck. Huck is horrified, and has trouble concealing it. The nature of his questions, "are they going over tonight" referring to her husbands desire to hunt Jim on Jackson's Island, gives him away.

Chapter 16
Huck receives two twenty dollar gold pieces from the men on a skiff who don't want to help Huck and 'his pap' because they suspect they have smallpox. Huck doesn't 'give' Jim money. He simply states that they had twenty dollars 'apiece'.

Ignorance

How are ignorance and superstition related?

Esoteric vs Exoteric. Max suggests that first one must reject the exoteric before one can appreciate the esoteric. At first, Huck's understanding of truth beyond what he experiences is tied into Miss Watson's and Aunt Sally's exoteric understanding of the Bible, and superstition, which he hears from others, including Jim.


Chapter 1.
Huck is convinced by Tom to return to the Widow Douglas' home by offering him a chance to join his newly formed band of robbers.
So we start out with the quaint observation that Huck and Tom are going to play at being robbers. Innocent enough. As a child I played cowboys and indians, and inevitable, someone got shot. Noone really was harmed (whether we should have assumed the indians were the bad guys is another story).
So on the one hand, it's just pretend, right? Or will there be evidence later on, much as there was in Tom Sawyer, that people will actually be harmed? 
If so, and if Huck knows this as early as Chapter 1, then in fact we come to the first stop of the spectrum of Huck's formation- he is unaware that he is, or will be, hurting people by playing the robber role.
Moral ignorance? What do we call this?

Chapter 2

Tom forms his band of robbers. One of the conditions is that if someone betrays the gang, his family must be killed. Huck has no family (at least noone knows whether his Dad is dead or alive). But Huck, about to be disinvited to the gang, offers that Miss Watson could be killed. The gang agrees so Huck is allowed to join the gang.

This moral ignorance, with no basis in reality or experience, but only fantasy, seems like a setup for a crisis. Eventually the opportunity to kill someone for real will present itself, and the clash of fantasy and the real will represent a growth event along the path to compassion and love.


Chapter 5

Here Huck encounters his father, 'Pap'. Pap has heard that Huck can read, and has money. Now Huck is not really educated, but compared to Pap, he is learned, and Pap proceeds to deride Huck for purposely trying to denigrate and embarrass his Father by educating himself. No matter that Huck himself has not really sought out an education, but has been forced to submit by the widow and Miss Watson.
In an almost throwaway line, Pap says that he has heard that he has got religion too.

Chapter 8

I don't know if it really is right to call it humor, but at the end of the chapter, Jim claims that he is still rich because he is worth eight hundred dollars, the amount that the widow was going to sell him for to the slave trader. Something in the statement makes me smile, that Jim takes some sort of pride in the fact that he is worth so much money.

Contemplation

Somewhere defined as a long look at the real. I need to find that quote.

I'm including here the contemplative thoughts of Huck, which of course I'm projecting onto Huck, but which I also firmly believe in when a person notices what is usually something ordinary as extraordinary.


Chapter 7:

In Chapter 7, Huck has completed his bloody escape designed to fool everyone into thinking he has been murdered, and is floating down the river to his destination Jackson Island in a canoe he found.
"I laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonlshine; I never knowed it before."

Also, as he is floating down the river, "Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late." (Twain's italics). It is another example of Huck's sense of the world, that lateness smells.

He also notices, in general, throughout his voyage down the river, that he can really hear well on the river. The acoustics over water.

Chapter 8:

Huck describes Jackson island and the river, which 'always looks pretty on a summer morning'. There are descriptions of leaves and spots of sunshine. How is it that a boy of this simple mind notices and describes beauty? Is it normal for a boy of this age to describe the beauty of nature, much less to even notice it?
Or how about this: "I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up.."? He notices that the smoke is not just in the air, but laying on the water. What an image!

Chapter 9:

Huck's describes the storm. P98.

Self Sacrifice and Humility

References to Huck's self-sacrifice for Jim, are, I'm sure, preceded by instances of Jim's self-sacrifice for Huck. Can't Jim more efficiently and quietly slip down the river without having to baby sit Huck?

Reading Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited, he makes this point:

When faced with oppression from power, there are alternatives:

Non-resistance.
Resistance.

Jesus chose a form of resistance, but an entirely new form: humility.

"humility cannot be humiliated" is quoted from Vladimir Simkhovitch's Toward the Understanding of Jesus.

One who is truly humble has possibly attained no vulnerability to fear.

Is it worth looking at Jim as one whose entire strength in dealing with his singular journey to escape and reunite with his family comes from humility? Where would this humility have come from? Is it the same quality that Jesus embodied?

So are there signs, in each of the encounters that Twain chronicles of Jim, of this humility as the source of strength?

Chapter 8

Huck encounters Jim on Jackson's Island, and immediately, and without hesitation, offers Jim all that he has to eat.

Structure and Approach

One option is to lay out chapters by virtue, e.g., humility, compassion, etc., and then follow the development of those in the journey.

I've stopped (2/12) reading too far ahead (now on Chapter 3) to take some side readings on the 'Two Providences'.
Thanks to Max, and to the footnotes in the annotated HF, there are two areas that have a great deal of analysis:

THE TWO PROVIDENCES
The Two Providences, which is basically Miss Watson vs the Widow Douglas. Miss Watson represents the institutional church view that the reason to behave is to avoid 'the bad place'. The widow represents the (I don't know how to label this yet) view that it's treating other people well, loving your neighbor, is how you avoid hell.
This is, in my view, classical religion, and Edgar Branch and others point out that both are still self-serving.
In my view, the widow's Providence is closer to the great truth that Jesus espouses, and for that matter, you find in all great religions- that the 'Kingdom', self realization and union with God, comes as one let's go of the self, lives selflessly, unattached to the superficial desires of this world.
More on this as we progress, but the stage is set by chapter 3, that Huck must choose between these two world views.

Second, and probably more prevalent, is the conversion of Huck. There are several instances of this, especially the scene (I'm recalling without reading it) where Huck pronounces that he would rather go to hell than to turn Jim in to the slave traders. Love triumphs, as does selflessness.

So the approach will be to follow the thread of Hucks struggle with these two providences. Or I should say, one approach or one line.

CONSOLATION/DESOLATION
However, thanks to some of the reading I've done so far, I've also realized that there will be an opportunity to directly tie in St Ignatius' great work on Consolation/Desolation in the Spiritual Exercises.

There is a particular passage that I recall that represents clearly what Ignatius called 'False Consolation'. Huck, at some point which I'll flush out later, decides to return Jim to Miss Watson, and he feels a sudden sense of calm and peace. Ignatius says that we should beware of a consolation (which he defines as a turning toward God) that in fact is false, because, in his 15th century language, the devil uses consolation to trick the person.

So I'll be looking for the 4 variations :Consolation. False Consolation. Desolation. False Desolation.

Finally, Max helped me externalize this: I wonder whether superstition in Jim, rather than be a source of the readers disdain and feeling of superiority, even comic relief, actually contributes to Jim's character?

SUPERSTITION AND IGNORANCE
There is a thread of showing the power of superstition in Huck and Jim. I wonder how they both are formed by this? Is there a difference between them?
Same for ignorance. Huck is uneducated. His Pap is uneducated. But Huck's is the result of laziness. Pap has a disdain for education and in fact is proud that his ancestors were illiterate.

CONTEMPLATION

There are some incidents of the contemplative experience that break in, sometimes in stark contrast to the base story.
In Chapter 7, Huck has completed his bloody escape designed to fool everyone into thinking he has been murdered, and is floating down the river to his destination Jackson Island in a canoe he found.
"I laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonlshine; I never knowed it before."

STYLISTIC COMPARISON
The idea, which I get from Brown, is to take two different characters and see how they handle the same situation, e.g., getting lost in a storm.
Or conversely, take two similar characters and see how the handle the same situation (Prince and the Pauper).

THE RIVER AND THE SHORE
The shore represents vulgarity, greed, fraud, violence, malice.
The raft represents freedom, security, happiness, and harmony with physical nature.
 -Hutchinson

SOUND HEART/DEFORMED CONSCIENCE
From Twains diary:
" a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and the conscience suffers defeat."

IRONY

Irony involves a deliberate misstatement designed to highlight the longtime adverse affects of a grossly immoral act, a blatantly dishonest deed, or an inhumane and un-Christian practice.