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Slavery of african americans
Slavery in Uncle Tom's cabin
Slavery in Uncle Tom's cabin
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a deeply symbolic narrative depicting the lives of a group of black slaves in southern America and the slave owners and slave hunters that followed them through their lives. Author Harriet Beecher Stowe, a white woman, uses her striking narrative to raise philosophical and moral questions about the implications of the institution of slavery in mid-19th century America. Her novel touches on the limits of the human spirit and the common human connection that brings together all people, whites, blacks, men and women alike. Her work was designed and intended to shock and horrify readers with its blatant and vivid descriptions of the atrocities that blacks endured during this both, both free and enslaved alike. Her work was written after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made aiding any fugitive slave a federal crime. Americans were aware of the presence of slavery in the nation and federal laws surrounding the institution, but did not fully comprehend the grisly truth behind the actual practice of slavery itself and its effect on the everyday lives of blacks.
While Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a fictional narrative, it was based on daily events happening in America at the time. The novel’s primary and most obvious theme is the evils and immorality of the entire institution of slavery. The novel introduces relatable and likeable characters who happen to be slaves. It also introduces sympathetic and kind white slave-owners, such as the young girl who Uncle Tom befriends, Eva, and her father, Augustine St. Clare. The novel portrays these slaves as human beings and not just as possessions, with human emotions and intelligence, a view that was rarely taken of blacks during this time, as they were seen as s...
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...d brought into the spotlight, but also it did so in a manner so shocking and realistic that Americans could not help but take notice. Its themes and messages were clear and concise; slavery was an unnecessary evil and stain on the moral values of a self-proclaimed Christian nation. Stowe took never before used approaches to describing the sufferings that slaves went through, creating sympathy for relatable human characters and families that sunk into all different types of American consciences. Americans would begin to doubt their own morality and the Christian way of life would come into question like never before. While a smaller theme, the notion of female strength and perseverance would aid in the development of the status of women in society.
Works Cited
Beecher Stowe, Harriet. Uncle Tom's Cabin: Life Among the Lowly. Boston: John P. Jewett & Company, 1852.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Stowe, Harriet Beecher”. Date of Last Revision Unknown. 6 Jan 2002. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/12373.html>.
As explained by author Carl E. Krog, “Some Northerners, if they did not disapprove of slavery, were uncomfortable with it, particularly with the slave trade and its consequent break-up of families in an age which idealized the family” (Krog, p. 253). Krog goes on to cite various examples of families being separated in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the first of which being the story of Eliza and Harry. Spurred by the fear of losing her son, Harry, Eliza flees captivity, taking refuge in the free state of Ohio. Once in Ohio, Eliza meets Senator and Mrs. Bird whom have lost a child and can understand Eliza’s pain. (Stowe 876-880). In a later scene, a slave being transported away from her family cries out in agony as white women, sitting with their own children, look on in disgust at her uncouth display of sadness. Another passenger on the ship calls out their hypocrisy, noting that if their children had been shipped away they too would be distraught. Stowe gives her characters something that swiftly taken away from real slaves, humanity. As noted in Ramesh Mallipeddi’s essay, slaves lost their identity at capture and were not trapped in a false, inhuman persona crafted by slave masters. Stowe pushes her characters out of the trope of uneducated animal allowing her readers to see slaves as they were,
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
I never thought that I would read a book over the summer, but over the course of these past two months, that changed. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” forever changed how I view slavery. I loved reading it. Throughout the whole novel, Stowe uses her experience and knowledge to portray the terrible hardships and struggles that slaves endured everyday. Not only does this book express the thoughts of the slaves and their faith in God, but also of the people around them. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” wanted so badly for America to give freedom and equality for all people, and that is what I enjoyed most while reading.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. "Uncle Tomâs Cabin." 1852. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. 2325, 2326.
Uncle Tom’s cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. It is an anti-slavery book that shows the reader the many sufferings endured by slaves in the period before the civil war. To the people of the modern day generation, these acts of slavery are unbelievable but the reader has to realize the fact that in those years, people suffered, to the point where they were just treated as property, where owners can do whatever they like and be disposed of or traded as if they were just material possessions and not even human. The book talks about the relationship between slaves and their masters as well as the role of women. As slavery was practiced during such times, Stowe tries to expose the difficult life people had in the past and how their faith in God helped them to endure all there hardships.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.
Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America is written by David S. Reynolds. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In this book, the author analyzes and discusses the effect of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in society. American history has been influenced through different works. However, as Reynolds claims, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped shape the world’s public opinion about slavery and religion in more than one way. Therefore, no book could have more powerfully molded American history than Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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.
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.
Jacobs’s story along with Stowe’s emphasizes the distinctive problems faced by female slaves, particularly sexual abuse and the suffering of slave mothers who are separated from their children. In spite of her suffering and possible criticism from the public, Jacobs was determined to make white Americans aware of the sexual victimization that slave women frequently faced and to stress the fact that they often had no choice but to give up their “virtue.”
It also teaches Christian values as well as family values. At the time of its publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an immediate success and one of biggest sellers of all time. Despite the fact that Stowe induces her own personal opinions, with the very little experience she has had with slaves, she delivers a magnificent novel which is still enjoyed by many modern readers today. The time of her novel’s publication was very important. It was published at the peak of the abolitionist movement, in the 1850’s.
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.
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.
Charles Dudley Warner in The Story of Uncle Tom 's Cabin, refers to the question that many modern day critics and scholars ask about the novel’s tremendous success, “Was this only an "event," the advent of a new force in politics; was the book merely an abolition pamphlet, or was it a novel, one of the few great masterpieces of fiction that the world has produced” (311)? Looking back we can see that Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t simply an “event” or political pamphlet, but a full-scale and highly successful literary attack on the evils of slavery that trumped even the power and influence of the politicians and government of the time. It is well-known that Abraham Lincoln even greeted Stowe in 1862 as ‘the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war’, referring to the Civil War, which ended the institution of slavery in the United States. But, Stowe did not write her novel simply for political reasons. As Tompkins explains, Stowe wrote her novel as a tool to turn the world from the rule of force to the rule of “Christian love”, and to bring about the “institution of the kingdom of heaven on earth” (141). This is what the everyday American of Stowe’s time could connect with, instead of just a political plea, but is also what causes