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.

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.

Love

Chapter 2

Tom and Huck are sneeking off during the night, and Jim hears them. He comes close, determined to listen further, but eventually falls asleep. Tom wants to tie Jim up as a trick. Huck says no. Huck says that it's because Jim might wake up. But the reader is given a second option- Huck is not really up to playing tricks like Tom.
This will change later as Huck tricks Jim on the river into thinking Huck is dead.
But here is an early glimpse at Hucks conscience.

Chapter 8:

Jim's first real encounter with Huck on Jackson island. Huck finds him near his fire, and greets him: "Hello Jim!".
Huck says he was glad to see him.

Jim, thinking the dead Huck is a ghost, is frightened, but then begins his first revelation of who he is:

" I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I awluz liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. "

"...en doan' do nuffin to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fren'."

So here is the basis for the beginning of the friendship, and for the master to teach the student. First of all, Jim tells Huck, and the reader, that he likes dead people and does all he can for them.
What does that mean? Is that just superstition? How can we read further into this seemingly throwaway statement?
At it's most basic, Jim is offering that he is respectful of the dead, perhaps prays for them, or performs some sort of ritual to honor them. We don't know. But at it's most simple I think it means that he shows he is capable of love towards the departed souls.

And then, further, Jim says that he has always been Huck's friend. We don't have evidence of that (unless I don't recall from Tom Sawyer). We do know that Huck was reluctant to trick Jim in chapter 2. So there must have been previous encounters.
What has Jim already seen in Huck to reveal that Huck has always been his friend? It would have been acceptable for Jim to have just said "Huck I AM your friend".

Further, Huck reflects that he was glad to see Jim and he wasn't afraid that Jim would rat him out. And that he was no longer lonesome.
So at this first encounter we see trust, friendship, and what appears to be a human to human encounter.

Then in a conversation about preparing a meal, Huck appears to be genuinely concerned that Jim has had nothing to eat but strawberries for the last 3-5 days.
After a meal of catfish and bacon and meal and coffee, they 'laid off and lazied'; so it is apparent that Huck is comfortable just hanging out with Jim.


As Jim recounts his escape, another sentiment about Huck: "I 'us powerful sorry you 's killed Huck, but I ain't no mo' , now."