This famous scene from Mark Twain'sThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can be read on different levels. The first is the way a young reader might see it, simply as a humorous prank that Tom Sawyer plays on Jim, Miss Watson's slave. The boys, Huck and Tom, have stolen candles from Miss Watson's house, but in their get-away, Huck catches his foot and makes a noise, drawing Jim out of the house to investigate. Jim sits and waits, but soon falls asleep. Tom puts Jim's hat up on a branch of the tree hanging over him as the prank. Jim later tells a tall tale of witches putting his hat up on the tree, abducting him, and flying him all over the county— which soon becomes the world. The witches also stole Miss Watson's candles, Jim says. Jim's explanation delights Huck and Tom, who is portrayed as a caricature...
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in this scene, easily outwitted by a couple of boys.
The event has the effect, however, of raising Jim's status among the local slaves, who marvel at the telling and retelling of the story. This highlights the strong trend of superstition that existed among many slaves at the time, as well as Jim's ingenuity in drawing attention to himself, raising his standing.
On a deeper level, the author, Mark Twain, is setting the reader up for a turn-around, when the novel's core message concerning Jim and slavery appears. Huck and Jim spend time together on the raft, and Huck has his profound revelation that Jim is a human being with feelings just like his own. The reader then naturally thinks back at Huck and Tom's prank, and through this literary device of contrast, feels a greater poignancy for Huck's change in thought, and by extension, for white racism and the treatment of slaves in general.
In chapter 2, Tom and Huck try to slip into Miss Watson's house to steal some candles:
Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen to get some more (ch. 2).
Afterward, they pull a prank on Jim (Miss Watson's slave). The boys take his hat and hang it on a tree limb near him. Jim wakes up later and imagines an elaborate story about how his hat ended up hung on the tree:
. . . Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans . . . every time he told it he spread it more and more (ch. 2).
The narrator explains that slaves would "come miles" to hear Jim's wondrous story about the witches (ch. 2). This shows that slaves, overall, were extremely superstitious. They try to explain the inexplicable with their imagined and superstitious stories.
Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire (ch. 2).
The slaves' interest in Jim's stories could also be for amusement's sake. Their lives as slaves do not have much entertainment. They work hard and get very little for all of their hard work. They don't get to go on adventures, like Jim unexpectedly goes on, so his stories serve to entertain them and their imaginations.
The theme of imagination and superstition comes up throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Jim claims that he has a magic hairball that tells fortunes. He also believes that having "hairy arms en a hairy breas' [is a] sign dat you's agwyne to be rich" (ch. 8). Huck often believes Jim's superstitions in the story. He, too, tries to explain his good luck and bad luck by listening to Jim's stories.