Sunday, November 4, 2012

How would you characterize Jim's predictions in chapters 8-11? Does the reader get any sense of which ones will come true and which will not?i am...

Most of the things Jim predicts are superstitions. For example, he says that if a person has hairy arms and a hairy chest, he'll be rich. Since Jim has both hairy arms and legs, he expects to be rich. But Jim's attitude also reflects this idea. He says, "“. . .I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars." With this kind of attitude, we somehow expect Jim's dream will come true. Another superstition of Jim is recalled by Huck when he tells Jim, " You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands." And the bad luck does come true but only because Huck doesn't listen to Jim. Huck places a snakeskin  next to Jim and a rattlesnake curls up in the skin and then bites Jim. He " was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again." Huck says, "I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it." The point Twain is trying to make is that Jim may seem ignorant and foolish, but he is actually very intelligent and Huck can and will learn a lot from him.

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