Key words: slave, slavery, emancipation, auction, christian, the Bible, the South, plantation
The author:
Harrite Beecher Stowe was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811. she was brought up in a Calvinist family. She received a good education and read widely the works of English writers. During her lifetime, Stowe heard bountiful stories of slave-holding counties in the South. Though not having experienced the cruelty of slavery herself, she showed great sympathy for the pathetic downtrodden slaves. Her famous work“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, a best seller at that time, was a benchmark in the anti-slavery literature, winning for her great success both within America and a broad. Despite the critism heaped on the book by colonists and slave owners who claimed it devoid of truthful presentation, the influence of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” remained farreaching, which was aptly proved by Lincoln’s words to Stowe, “the little lady who wrote the book that made this great war!” besides the anit-slavery words she also wrote novels describing New England life. she once wrote in her speech that she would rather depict the homely yet honest plainness of native land than the exotic setting of romance. Unlike most local colorists, who looked back to the past through a nostalgic haze, she presented the merciless reality. Her attention to the local legends and dialet, her gife for creating humous characters, and her capacity for compelling story telling have exerted great influence on other writers.
Plot
Tom is a black servant in the Shelbys’. His masters are very kindhearted. Tom’s family lives peacefully and happily in a cabin. However, all delights are suddenly halted by the presence of Haley, a slavetrader. Mr.Shelby fails in business and owes an enormous debt to him and thus is forced to sell Tom and little Jim. Jim is the son of Eliza, a mulatto and servant, who is delicately cared and educated by Mrs.Shelby. Hearing of the despiring news, Eliza decieds to flee with her son. She has a narrow escape when resting beside the Ohio River and is almost caught up by Haley. With the innate power evoked by the strong yearning for life, she succeeds in crossing the icy river. Her husband, George Harris, also a mulatto slave, is industrious and ingenious. However, his tyranical master, who grows incres asingly jealous of his wisdom and handiness, orders him to quit his family and go to the South where slaves are tortured by unbearable and incessant labour and have little hope of returing. Indignant with the suffocating injustice and bleak outlook of future life, he decides to flee to Canada at all cost. With the help of kindhearted people, George reunites with his wife and son, gets rid of the persecution by slavetraders, and finally arrives in the promised and free land of Canada. After wives of twists and turns on the way, they manage to get out of the infamous incantation of slavery.
Tom, then, leaves the beloved home and people for a place that is utterly unknown. On a boat, he gets to know little Evangeline, who is then about 5 years old. Tom saves Eva’s life when she falls into water and is bought by Eva’s father, St.Clare. St.Clare treats his slaves well or even indulges them. Tom develops sincere and intimate friendship with Eva, who is angelic and who trully lives out the creed of “ all men are created equal”. Unfortunately, she died of consummation two years later, which is an hard blow to all the people in the household, either black or white. As is required by Eva, St.Clare begins the legal formalities to liberate Tom. However, he is stabbed to death when he tries to separate two intoxicated guys in fight. To Tom, it is a double blow for he suffers the loss of a benigh master and the dashing of hope for freedom. Now, the fate of all the slaves are in the hand of selfish and inconsiderate Marie. Tom is bought by a atrocious slaveowner, Simon Legree in an auction. There he is maltreated for refusing to whip the infirm female slaves. It is a formidable place, a place devoid of any hope or relief, a place where negroes live no more decently than animals and a place where Legree utilizes the Negroes to the extent that he wants to derive oil from a dried sponge. Ho wever, on such desolate land, Tom never loses his faith in and gratitude for God. There are times when the brutal torture diminishes the hope of redemption and makes him believe that God’s wrath is against them, he soon returns to cheerfulness. Impelled by endless torture, Cassy asked Tom to assist her in murdering Legree, but she is refused because Tom thinks such wicked deed is a blasphemy of God. Instead, Tom helps Cassy and Emmeline flee. Tom is striken fatally for refusing to disclose their whereabouts. Just before his death, George Shelby comes to buy him back. But it is too late. Enlightende by the deplorable death of Tom, George returns to liberate all his slaves. Reassuingly, Cassy reunits with her lost daughter Eliza and George Harris with is sister.
Character:
Uncle Tom: a faithful servant and a reverent believer in almighty God. He is honest and kind, believing heart and soul in goodness and truth. In times of difficultities, he finds the healing power of the Bible, which helps him conquer the physical pain, transend the earthy being and reach the eternity of the spirit. Struggling at the last breath of life, he has no regret for sacrificing himself to help Cassy and Emmeline flee from tyrany. Instead, he feels pleasant and glorified for the eternity after death.
Aunt Chole:Tom’s wife, a servant and a cook. After Tom is sold, she asks to be hired out in order to earn money to buy him back.
Mrs.Shelby: a faithful christian. She treats the slaves philantropically. She brings up and educates Eliza carefully as if she was her own daughter. She is strongly opposed to selling slaves.
Eliza: beautiful mulatto slave, an amiable and obedient servant, she has been inculcated with the doctrine fo christianity, always admonishing her husband not to use violence against injustice. Unable to bear the separation with her only son, she takes him and flees.
George Harris: Eliza’s husband. He is smart and hardworking. Once he invents a machine to facilitate his work. He is also rebellious and undaunted, daring to risk his life to fight against injustice and to persue liberty.
Augustine St.Clare: a benign slaveowner. He has high ideal to liberate the slaves, yet he is retard n taking actions. He ensures his slaves decent and comfortable life and thus deems it unnecessary to liberate them because they are quite well off.
Evengeline: St.Clare’s only daughter, the incarnation of angel. Thouth less experienced than adults, she has a keener insight than them. She disregards her superior position, mingles with the servants and treats them equally. Her love and selfishness infiltrate throughout the whole community, healing the wound of broken hearts. Her name resembles the Evengel, a religious term which means felicity.
Miss.Ophelia: St.Clare’s cousin in New England. She strives for the rights of slaves but at the same time maintains discrimination against them. She is eager to spread her own knowledge and understanding. At first her efforts to reclaim the naughty and wicked Topsy turn in vain. Finally, under the influence of Eva, she manages to love Topsy as equally as she loves the people of her own race and cultivate her into a decent girl.
Simon Legree: an atrocious, unhumane, callous and greedish slaveowner, the killer of his loving mother. He exploits the slaves ruthlessly. What he dreads most is the haunting fo his mother’s spirit.
Cassy: a fair middle-aged slave, Eliza’s mother. She once enjoys a decent and comfortable life with her daughter. But they are auctioned after the sudden death of their master. Unfortunately, Cassy falls into the hand of Legree. She bears not only the burden of laborious field work but also the humiliation of coinhabiting with the hedious Legree. For all the misfortunes falling on her, she becomes cynical and gloomy.
Theme:
The theme of the novel, undoubtedly, are the enormous sufferings and sad fates of African Americans under the oppression of slavery.countless fathers are forced to leave their beloved families and sent to places where there is no hope but only endless suffering. Countless mothers are forever separated from their children no matter how desperately they implore for merch. Countless childen become mere tools of labour, not knowing where and by whom they are born and finding no rain fo love reaching their desolate desert of emotion. However fortunate some slaves are, they never know when they will be forcibly severed from the heaven-like life and sank in the bottom families and bottomless hell. To many prosperous and happy whites, life is wuite a blessing, but to most blacks, life is more like a curse. Therefore, its understandable that many mothers kill their babies shortly after they are born, it is the timely termination fo jeoperdy in life. all these repulsive cruelties have riven thousands fo hearts, shattered thousands of families and driven a helpless and sensative race to frenzy and despire. Therefore, there’re those who seek in death a shelter from woes more dreadful than death. Nothing fo the tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be conceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes, daily and hourly acting on the shores, beneath the shadow of American law. What an irony it is that the unhumane salver can be legitimate in a country which deems itself an epitome of demoncracy and a country which is founded on the principle of “ all men are created equal”. The book is a bell that tolls to awaken the blacks to stand up and fight agaist tyranny. It beacons the whites to weigh their conscience and to take actions. It displays the author’s earnest yearning for racial equality as powerfully as the illuminating speech delievered by Doctor Martin Luther King Jr about one hundred years later. Trully, not only Martin Luthing King, but also the whole blace race and the intelligent and upright among the whites dream that one day the desolate state, swelting with the heat of injustice and oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
The reasons why slavery could last for so long.
The first reason is white people’s inveterate discrimination against balcks. In many white people’s pespective, blacks are born inferior. They’re just advanced animals, having no humanity to feel or no intelligence to reason as whites do. For those blacks who seem wise and comfident, they need lessons to remind them of their inferiority, take Marie for example. A self-centered and narrow-minded woman, she always thinks herself entitled to get others’ consideration and care, while accusing her serwant of selfishness when she worried about her own child, scolding her for inconsideration when she dozes off after days and nights of attending Marie. Well, it may be understandable that such a woman is censorious to her serwants. It’s not unimaginable that she uses every possible mens to defend her rights and deny other’s rights. Even Miss Ophelia, an enlightened and educated woman, still has vestiges of ingrained discrimination against blacks. It seems that she has made all her efforts to reclaim Topsy, but the girl is too pertinacious to be transformed. However, the truth is that she never allows Topsy to touch her and she may be able to like Topsy but not love her. This is a clear edvidence fo discrimination. No one can be educated and loved by those who dispise him. As long as discrimination is present in one’s heart, despite its magnitude, he can never treat the blacks with true equality.
The second reason is white’s avarice. The slavetraders, who are callous to the suffering of blacks, make profits by hook or crook. The slaveowners, who are devoid of compassion and humanity, wantonly abuse the lives of blacks. The foundermental reason for the appearance of slavery is that whites crave for confortable and easy life, but they dread the hard labor in the realization of prosperity. While enamoured of the hearty fruits, they are much less enamoured of the efforts to sow the seeds and water the plants. Then came the slaves, who worked the most but enjoyed the least and who undertook the toughest job but lived the humblest life. to the greedy southern slaveowners, the slaves were inexhaustible labours as long as they have whips to impel them. They will never be satisfied unless the last drop of their slaves’ blood was sucked for their benefits. Take Legree for example. In the harvest time, he exhausts the slaves to the degree that Tom can not keep his eyes open to read the Bible, which gives him so much power.
The third reason is lack of resistance from blacks. Many readers, appreciate very much, the faithful and obedient Tom, as I do. As long as Tom has a master, he keeps to the principle to serve the best of himself. Even for the sordid Legree, Tom is willing to use his own blood to save him if necessary. We salute his kindness. But if every slave live in the same way, then the hope for emancipation will turn into mirage, a magnificent yet unattainable image. For such an abominable and ingrainded system like slavery, there must be a gust of tumultuous wind- resistance and revolution- to eradicate its root. Otherwises, it will burgeon wildly like the godenrod, threatening the survivak of all the lives around it. History of all huamn races have taught us a thought-provoking lesson: powerful revolution instead of peaciful reform is the solution to a nation’s foundermental problems. Without the bold resistance against English imperialists, the United States can not win its independence. Without the unprecedented revoluthion led by Sun Zhongshan, Chinese people would probably live under the ravage of feudal emperors and foreign invaders. Likewise, without the jointed efforts and resistance agaist slavery, blacks can not see the light of freedom at the end of tunnel. In the book, George Harris is an incarnation of a bold fighter. Faced with injustice, he dares to stand up and defend his own rights while keeping to the principle of not killing people indisciminately. The indignation in him is transformed into a strong impetus to lpursue liberty and happiness. Finally, he realize his dreams. In contrast, uncle Tom dies at last. His death seems inevitable because no act of kindness is able to evoke sympathy or conscience in the ruthless Legree. This contrast is an implication that a revolution is forthcoming to eradicate slavery. Not coincidentally, the civil war broke out and the Emancipation Proclaimation was announced by Lincoln after the publication of the book.
The fourth reason is the lack of education. Education is the greatest impetus for the development and part and parcel of a nation. Without the enlightenment brought about by education, a nation will probably stay in stagnation. The African-Americans had been deprived of decent life, let alone the opportunities to receive formal education. Lack of education means lack of a deep and thorough understanding of their present situation and thus the ability to lift themselves above the historical plight. Black children were inculcated with a sense of inferiority. They were born to be stepped on. Topsyy is an apt example to illustrate this. Despite Miss Ophelia’s hard efforts to reclaim her, she remains mischevious, always playing tricks and irritating her. While asked what makes her behave like this, she says she is born wicked and she needs to be whipped. What an astonishing remark of oneself! she is only one of the numerous blacks who deem themselves inferior. Not so many people can be as proud of himself and his race as George Harris is. He says it is with the oppressed, enslaved African race that he casts in his lot; and, if he wished anything, he would whish himself two shades darker, rather than one whiter. What the African-Americans need most is education. They had more than the rights of common men-they had the claim of an injured race for reparation. They needed education to know that the African race has peculiarities, yet to be unfolded in the light of civilization and chritianity, which, if not the same with those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be, morally, of even a higher type.
The last reason is the loophole in the leagal system. Needless to say, the trading and exploitation of slaves would not be so rampant if the law prohibit these. Instead, the law stipulated that slaves would be auctioned after the death of their masters. This put many slaves at the mercy of any white unknown. Cassy and Emmeline used to enjoy happy life, but they fall into the hands of the cruel Legree after the sudden deathe of their masters. Tom’s hope for liberty is dashed after St.Clare dies accidentally. How much affiliction had the law imposed on the pathetic slaves! No wonder George Harris says America is not his country because the law of America crushes his race instead of protecting it.
Conclusion:
After decades of tireless efforts, the law in American now endows the blacks with equal rights. It is reassuring to see that many black elites appear on the stages of all fields. Brack Obama’s winning as the president of the United States is, especially, an unprecedented victory of the black race. If the blacks have won in the fight against slavery and discrimination, they still have to struggle against the vestige of that historical plight because frankly speaking, they do not enjoy the same treatment as whites do in every aspect of life. to utterly wipe out the bitterness and consequence of that time, there’s still a long way to go.
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