Tom Sawyer Essay, Help Needed!
I didn't read the whole bood, the essay was on the first few chapters (I think 10 or somthing) It's not supposed to be long.
Tom Sawyer Essay
By****
Superstition In an Uncertain World
“Say - what is dead cats good for, Huck?”
“Good for? Cure warts with.”
“No? Is that so? I know something that’s better.”
“I bet you don’t. What is it?”
“Why, spunk-water!”
In an uncertain world, superstition is often turned to for guidance and help. Sometimes for medicine, sometimes for faith, but always for the unknown. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, witchcraft, religion, and overall knowledge is looked at without reason, which is why everyone blindly believed it.
The first major point of superstition in Tom Sawyer is the extreme value in religion at that time. Going to church was just as important as going to school; you went regardless of how you felt about it. It was looked at as both belief and science. Because science was rarely present, something had to take it’s place. The people were taking everything they heard as fact when it should have been taken with a grain of salt. Because there was no knowledge of evolution or the origin of life, the bible became the teacher of said subjects.
Another example of looking at superstition in place of the truth is the conversation between Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer about Wicca cures to warts. There are many mentioned “treatments”, but the one that is mainly focused on is the “Spunk Water” remedy. This example is a perfect one to demonstrate said superstition. The procedure is as follows:
1: Face the stump
2: Dip your hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water was in the daytime
3: Say the spell “Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swallow these warts”
4: Quickly walk away, 11 steps, eyes shut, turn around 3 times and walk home without speaking to anybody
The “spell” is so complex and intricate because to believe in superstion, one would have to be able to blame what does not work on the executer of the spell, and not the spell itself. This allows belief in anything simple and easy; it allows an excuse and reason for what appears not to work. It is a perfect example of superstition taking the place of knowledge, which was obviously not uncommon during the time of the book.
And finally, perhaps the best example of myths filling in for a lack of knowledge was an error made by the writer. At one point, Mark Twain gave Tom Sawyer the dialogue, “I’ve took off thousands of warts that way, Huck. I play with frogs so much that I’ve always got considerable many warts”. The “fact” that frogs or toads cause warts is a legend without a grain of truth,. This so well describes the lack of knowledge at the time of Tome Sawyer, although it is only a small detail. By just writing his story, Mark Twain made the ultimate reference to a motif without even knowing it.
Without mind, everyone in the world of uncertainty believed everything they heard. This ultimately led to propaganda of superstition taking over everyone’s mind, thought, overall will. In an age of uncertainty, it isn’t hard to believe what you are told.
