The Strength Of Uncle Tom's Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

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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. Christianity has always been a very big part of Stowe’s life. “Her father, a leading Calvanist congregational minister, abolitionist, and founder of the American Bible Society, often expressed his abolitionist views through his Sunday sermons from the pulpit.” (Largen) Besides growing up in a very religious family, Stowe was living at the time when Christianity became a big part of everybody’s live and their views. During the 1820s and 1830s, a Second Great Awakening took over American culture. “It democratized American Christianity, making it a truly mass enterprise. Americans combine the nations of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other”. (Foner, 358) Th... ... middle of paper ... ... scoured by the Romans to his place of death. Tom’s death wasn’t for granted. Through his death and his lifetime, many people were converted to Christianity, others started thinking that maybe by glorifying God, and following his footsteps, their life will be better and without cruelty. He opened eyes of the Mr. Shelby to the nature of slavery. He realized that in the eyes of the God slavery is wrong, unhuman and immortal. “"Witness, eternal God!" said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor friend; "oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!" (Stowe, 519) Mr. Shelby decided to work toward abolition of slavery with the help of God, because that is what God really wants. This is the main message that Stowe tried to pass to the readers. She wants that everyone to open their eyes, as Mr. Shelby did.

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