Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a classic novel that some people claimed evoked the American Civil War. Stowe motivated people to take sides over the issue of slavery by discussing the issue and showing the cruel aspects of it. The main focus of the novel was to show whites that African American’s have souls and feelings like any other human; it was common for whites at the time to view blacks as cattle. Families were separated, and the white people’s reasoning was that blacks did not feel the loss the same way a white person would. Stowe’s basic argument is that it is wrong to mistreat blacks because they suffer just as much as whites. The most important character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is Uncle Tom himself. Uncle Tom is a middle aged black man who is very honest and intelligent. Uncle Tom is entrusted with many important dealings of the house, even large sums of money, by his master Mr. Shelby. Uncle Tom has many opportunities to escape, but he always returns, feeling that he cannot violate his master’s trust by running away with his money. Uncle Tom’s story resembles the biblical story of Joseph and his enslavement in Egypt. Joseph’s master Potiphar entrusts Joseph with all his belongings just as Mr. Shelby does with Uncle Tom. The turning point in the novel is when Mr. Shelby finds himself in debt to a slave trader by the name of Haley, and the only solution to give Uncle Tom and Harry, the son of Eliza, one of Mr. Shelby’s maids, to Haley. This is the split point in the novel, with the plot going in two different directions, one following the story of Eliza and Harry and the other following the story of Uncle Tom. Eliza runs away with Harry and meets up with her husband, George, who ran away from a cruel s... ... middle of paper ... ...ecause he himself hates the Christian values. He tries to force Uncle Tom to look out for himself and flog a woman. Uncle Tom blatantly refuses. Legree is outraged, and yells that he owns Uncle Tom, body and soul, to which Uncle Tom replies that Jesus owns his soul, not Legree. The ultimate reward of living a Christian life is worth any amount of pain Legree will inflict on him. Legree orders Uncle Tom to be beaten until he obeys, but he dies. According to Stowe, Uncle Tom wins because he was able to go to heaven while Legree lost because he will ultimately go to hell. In the nineteenth century, it was a novel idea that blacks also had a soul like the whites. The idea was the first step for making the white people responsible for their actions of the black people, be it good or bad; slave owners were forced to view their black slaves as humans instead of animals.
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852. This anti-slavery book was the most popular book of the 19th century, and the 2nd most sold book in the century, following only the Bible. It was said that this novel “led to the civil war”, or “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. After one year, 300,000 copies were sold in the U.S., and over 1 million were sold in Britain.
Nineteenth century America was in need of a courageous man or woman who would stand up for those who did not have a voice. Slavery was ruining the lives of thousands, yet nobody cared to do anything about it. Harriet Beecher Stowe rose up to meet this need by writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that clearly outlined its intended audience, the reason it was needed, the faults of slavery, and the effect of this information on the reader.
Throughout the course of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, numerous characters stand out for their complexity in character. However, only a fraction of those can contend with the memorability and intricacy of Evangeline and Ophelia St. Clare. In the chapters the two become included in, they possess influence over the other characters, including Uncle Tom, the lead protagonist. The individuals obtain stark contrasts between each other, from their personalities to their personal convictions. Additionally, they also vary in the level of character development they undergo in the story.
The first method in which Uncle Tom's faith allows him to cope with the hardships of slavery is socially. One must understand that Uncle Tom is constantly paralleled to Christ during the course of events in the novel. Tom is the social leader of the slaves on the Shelby plantation. Uncle Tom's cabin is the focal point of fellowship for the slaves. This is because everybody perceives Tom as a mentor, and also because Aunt Chloe, his wife, is a fantastic cook. His charismatic personality allows him to lead and organize their religious meetings which are held in his home as well. One can see how Tom's faith allows him to be a social leader among the slaves. Stowe says on page 35 that, Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters, in the neighborhood. Having, naturally, an organization in which morale was strongly predominant together with a greater breadth and cultivation of mind that obtained among his companions, he was looked up to with great respect, as a sort of minister among them.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1850s that “changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property”. (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center) This book “demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War”. (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center) “The strength of Uncle Tom's Cabin is its ability to illustrate slavery's effect on families, and to help readers empathize with enslaved characters.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center) As Foner mentioned: “By portraying slaves as sympathetic men and women, and as Christians at the mercy of slaveholders who split up families and set bloodhounds on innocent mothers and children, Stowe’s melodrama gave the abolitionist message a powerful human appeal.” (472) With this novel, Stowe wanted to convince Christians that God doesn’t’ approve slavery, that it is evil which must be destroyed.
George Sand wrote of Stowe's style in Uncle Tom's Cabin, "We should feel that genius is heart, that power is faith, that talent is sincerity, and finally, success is sympathy" (Fields, Ed., 154). Faith, sincerity, and sympathy are indeed the overarching narrative tones Stowe strikes in the novel and are the feelings she wishes to awaken in her readers. Sympathy is likewise what Eliot wishes to stir in her readers in relating Maggie Tulliver's tragic life. Both Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Mill on the Floss utilize religious themes to accomplish these aims. Each points out the hypocrisy of conventional religious sentiments, highlights sincere religious sentiments within a few select individuals, and compares its suffering hero/heroine to Christ the martyr. By casting their narratives in familiar religious paradigms, the authors ably strike deepest into the hearts of their readers, impressing them with the tragedy of the situations they describe.
Overall Uncle Tom’s Cabin is filled with religious overtones of martyrdom, imposed religion, and genuine piety of the slaves in bondage. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows the divide between how the slaveholders see religion as a whip to keep slaves in line and how slaves see the same religion as a balm for the wounds inflicted on them by the whites.
The Effective Story in Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe, a northern abolitionist, published her best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin contracts the many different attitudes that southerners as well as northerners shared towards slavery. Generally, it shows the evils of slavery and the cruelty and inhumanity of the peculiar institution, in particular how masters treat their slaves and how families are torn apart because of slavery. The novel centers around a pious slave, Uncle Tom, and how he is sold over and over again. It shows the different attitudes that Tom’s masters share about slavery, and how their slaves should be treat.
William Arthur Ward once said, "Real religion is a way of life, not a white cloak to be wrapped around us on the Sabbath and then cast aside into the six-day closet of unconcern." Religion is the one thing that people can usually tolerate but never agree upon. Each faith seems to have an ordained assumption that they have the correct thoughts on how to life one's life or how to think about things or the way to act in certain situations. Still, each religion has its own "sub-religions." If someone refers to Christianity, there are several different religions that are blanketed under that umbrella: Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, and Presbyterian are just a handful. The inconsistencies that are associated with everyone's belief about religion run into deeper ruts of confusion. This confusion leads people to have distorted views as to what they believe and what their religion is all about. This is no different from the feelings about slavery by Christians in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Throughout the novel, Christianity presents itself in a few different lights; as a twisted and deformed glimmer of what religion is supposed to be with undertones of bigotry and prejudice, an innocent yet naive child that brings joy to everyone he or she meets, and as Uncle Tom himself, the standard for what a Christian is supposed to be. These different portrayals of Christian living come from Stowe's own beliefs about Christians and brings them into the light.
Even today, with literature constantly crossing more lines and becoming more shocking, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin remains one of the most scandalous, controversial, and powerful literary works ever spilled onto a set of blank pages. Not only does this novel examine the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward slavery, but it introduces us to the hearts, minds and souls of several remarkable and unprecedented characters.
In the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of the main themes is religious faith; specifically Christian faith. Stowe’s characterization of this was that Christian faith is a strong force of love that has the ability to invalidate slavery. This was shown in many characters like Uncle Tom and Eliza. As a result of their strong Christian faith and values, Uncle Tom and Eliza were able to
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a woman who grew up in a time of slavery under the heavy influence of the white man. She sought to spread her powerful abolitionist message of the humanization of slaves through her novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which uses structures of parallelism and contrast with slaves as sympathetic and moral human beings. From their small remarks, to their letters and even their own feelings towards their, more often than not, villainous masters, Stowe shows the slaves are sympathetic and real humans. Stowe goes on beyond this message to also portray women as the actively moral, men as the avaricious, and Uncle Tom as the exception to both.
“As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” This quote said by Thomas Jefferson accurately depicted the political, economic, and social issues that were presented in the 1800s. The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe created a massive awareness politically and socially for the abolitionist movement. Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin Stowe paints the picture of the cruel and unjust treatment of slaves on large plantations in the 1850s. Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin shows that large scale plantations showed empathy towards their slaves after the 1830s; however, Uncle Tom’s Cabin accurately depicts the lives of slaves after
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, has had a tremendous impact on American culture, both then and now. It is still considered a controversial novel, and many secondary schools have banned it from their libraries. What makes it such a controversial novel? One reason would have been that the novel is full of melodrama, and many people considered it a caricature of the truth. Others said that she did not show the horror of slavery enough, that she showed the softer side of it throughout most of her novel. Regardless of the varying opinions of its readers, it is obvious that its impact was large.
...was brutally whipped by Legree and his overseers for days and was left for dead. On his deathbed, George Shelby, son of Mr. Shelby, came to attempt to buy Tom's freedom. While dying, Tom retained no ill wishes for anyone: not even Legree, hoping that he would find God, and looking forward to the eternal kingdom that awaited him.