Revolt or Surrender

Summary

Uncle Tom, a slave on the Shelby plantation, is loved by his owners, their son, and every slave on the property. He lives contentedly with his wife and children in their own cabin until Mr. Shelby, deeply in debt to a slave trader named Haley, agrees to sell Tom and Harry, the child of his wife's servant Eliza. Tom is devastated but vows that he will not run away, as he believes that to do so would plunge his master so far into debt that he would be forced to sell every slave.

Just before Tom is taken away, Mrs. Shelby promises him that she will buy him back as soon as she can gather the funds. Tom is sold to Haley, who eventually sells him to a kindly master named Mr. St. Clare.

  Eliza, however, cannot bear to part with her son and escapes the night before he is to be taken from her. She escapes successfully and makes her way to a Quaker village, with a family that harbors slaves. There, she is reunited with her husband George, who lived on a neighboring plantation and has also escaped to flee his master's cruelty. The couple and their son spend a night with the Quaker family before returning to the Underground Railroad.

Tom befriends his new master and especially his young daughter Eva, who shares Tom's deep religious faith and devotion. Eva abhors cruelty and eventually is so overcome with grief over slavery that when she becomes ill, she accepts her impending death peacefully and tells her family and their servants that she is happy knowing that she is going to heaven, where such cruelty does not exist. St. Clare begins to confront the realization that he believes slavery is evil, and he promises Tom that he will fill out forms guaranteeing his freedom in the event of St. Clare's death.

Shortly after Eva dies, her father dies tragically in an accident, and Tom's fate is left entirely in the hands of Marie, St. Clare's selfish and unsympathetic wife. Marie decides to move back to her parents' estate and to sell all the slaves, despite Miss Ophelia's exhortation that Marie should fulfill St. Clare's promise to give Tom his freedom. Marie refuses, and just before he is sold, he writes a letter to the Shelbys (with the help of Mr. Legree) telling them his plight and asking for their help. The letter goes unanswered, and Tom ends up in the hands of Simon Legree, an evil and bitter plantation owner whose philosophy is to work his slaves hard and replace them when they inevitably die just a few years later.

On Legree's plantation, Tom meets two fellow slaves, Emmeline and Cassy. Emmeline is a young mulatto woman sold to Legree at the same time as Tom, and she attempts to befriend the embittered Cassy, who has suffered at the hands of Legree for several years. Cassy has seen her children sold and is so destitute that Tom's pleas that she put her faith and trust in God fall on deaf ears. Legree soon comes to hate Tom after Tom refuses to beat and discipline the other slaves. Legree had planned to turn Tom into a brutal overseer, and when he realizes that Tom will not participate in cruelty, he becomes enraged and takes out his wrath on Tom. Tom becomes discouraged until he has a vision of heaven one night as he is drifting off to sleep. The vision reinvigorates him, and he decides it is his mission to suffer for the other slaves. He regularly fills their cotton baskets at the expense of his own, gives them his food and water, and reads the Bible to them.

Tom's acts of kindness enrage Legree, and when Emmeline and Cassy escape, he demands that Tom tell him everything he knows. Tom admits that he knew of their plans to escape and is aware of their whereabouts, but he refuses to disclose where they are. Legree beats Tom so severely that after a few days, he dies.

Cassy and Emmeline eventually escape, and they happen to wind up on the same northern-bound ferry as George Shelby, who is rooming next to a woman named Madame de Thoux. Through conversation, it is discovered that Eliza Harris is Cassy's daughter, and George Harris is Madame de Thoux's brother. Cassy and Madame de Thoux journey together to Canada, where they are reunited with their family. Madame de Thoux reveals that her husband has left her a large inheritance, and they all move to France together, where George is educated. The family then relocates to Africa, and Cassy's long-lost son, who has been traced, joins them. Topsy moves with Miss Ophelia to New England, then moves to Africa to work as a missionary. George Shelby gives all the servants on the Shelby farm their freedom, and tells them to be Christians and to think of Tom.

Brief introduction of the writer

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), American writer and philanthropist, best-known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52). The book was quickly translated into 37 languages and it sold in five years over half a million copies in the United States.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut, and brought up with puritanical strictness. She had one sister and six brothers. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a controversial Calvinist preacher. Stowe's mother died when she was four. When she was eleven years old, she entered the seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, kept by her elder sister. Four years later she was employed as assistant teacher.

In 1834 Stowe began her literary career when she won a prize contest of the Western Monthly Magazine, and soon she was a regular contributor of stories and essays. Her first book, The Mayflower, appeared in 1843.

In 1836 Stowe married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. Over the next 14 years Stowe had 7 children. In 1850 Calvin Stowe was offered a professorship at Bowdoin, and they moved to Brunswick, Maine. In Cincinnati Stowe had come in contact with fugitive slaves. She learned about life in the South from her own visits there and saw how cruel slavery was. These experiences led Stowe to compose her famous novel, which was first published in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era and later in book form.

Stowe started to publish her writings in The Atlantic Monthly and later in the Independent and in Christian Union. In 1853, 1856, and 1859 Stowe made journeys to Europe and became friends with George Eliot, Elisabeth Barrett Browning, and Lady Byron. However, British public opinion turned against her when she charged Lord Byron with incestuous relations with his half-sister in Lady Byron Vindicated (1870).

Attacks on the veracity of her portrayal of the South led Stowe to publish The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in which she presented her source material. A second anti-slavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), told the story of a dramatic attempt at slave rebellion. Stowe's later works did not gain the same popularity as Uncle Tom's Cabin . She published novels, studies of social life, essays, and a small volume of religious poems. Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Old-Town Folks (1869) and her last novel Poganuc People (1878) were partly based on her husband's childhood reminiscences and are among the first examples of local color writing in New England.

Stowe's mental faculties failed in 1888, two years after the death of her husband. She died on July 1, 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Main characters of the story

The main characters in this story are Uncle Tom, Eliza and George Harris.

Uncle Tom is a pious, trustworthy, slave. He never wrongs anyone and always obeys his master. A very spiritual person, Uncle Tom tries his best to obey the Bible and to do what is right. Eliza is a beautiful slave owned by George Shelby, Sr., the same person who initially owns Tom. Eliza has a son, Harry. Eliza's husband, George Harris, lives on a nearby plantation. George is a brilliant man, and invented a machine that was used in the factory he works in. His owner became jealous and demoted George from his factory job to doing hard labor on the plantation. Setting: These stories takes place throughout the states of Kentucky and Mississippi in the year 1891 in the Plantations and fields and workshops are were the slaves work mostly in sunny and good working conditions.

Chapters 1-5 because his Kentucky plantation was overwhelmed by debt, George Shelby, Sr. makes plans to trade some slaves to a slave dealer named Haley in exchange for debts being canceled. The dealer selects Uncle Tom as payment for the debt. While the two are discussing the possible transaction, Eliza's son, Harry, comes rushing into the room. Haley decides he wants to take Harry also, but Shelby refuses to part with the child. Eliza, overhearing part of the conversation, is frightened and confides her fears to her husband, George Harris. The fact that George's owner is mistreating him, combined with a possible sale of his son persuades George to begin planning to run away. After inferring from an overheard conversation between Mrs. Shelby and Mr. Shelby that they are indeed going to sell Harry and Uncle Tom, Eliza warns Tom and she runs away.

Chapters 6-15 Eliza is able to cross the Ohio River and get to a safe place before Haley's two hired slave-catchers can catch up with her. Although he was warned, Uncle Tom stays on the plantation, leaving it up to God to protect him. At the same time, George Harris begins his escape. Disguised as a Spaniard, George takes his time finding a route on the Underground Railroad. He just happens to go to the same place where Eliza and Harry are being hidden. The family is finally united at a Quaker Settlement. Uncle Tom, meanwhile, is on a boat en route to New Orleans. After gallantly saving the life of young Eva St. Clare, he is rewarded by being bought by her father, Augustine. Augustine is married to a selfish woman who claims to be sick and takes no interest in her daughter. So it is on his return trip from Maine where he has picked up his cousin Ophelia who will care for Eva that Augustine buys Tom.

Chapters 16-30 Unused to Southern customs and slavery, Ophelia tries to bring order to the St. Claire plantation, but the pampered slaves do not cooperate. Eva, who has always been frail, was dying and asks her father to free his slaves. After her death, Augustine was making plans to free the slaves when he was killed while breaking up a fight. Mrs. St. Clare had no intentions of freeing any slaves and had Uncle Tom sold at an auction to a brutal plantation owner named Simon Legree.

Chapters 31-40 For weeks, Uncle Tom tries in vain to please his new master. Legree has enough of Tom's good heartedness after Tom was ordered to beat another female slave and refused. For this show of abstinence, Tom was beaten until he fainted. A slave woman named Cassy helps treat Tom's wounds and afterwards went to Legree's apartment to torment him. Legree is superstitious and believes that Cassy would cast an evil spell on him, and as a result, he was afraid of her. Haunting by the guilty secrets, Legree drinks until he falls asleep. Soon, Cassy along with another slave, Emmeline, run away from the plantation. Convinced that Tom knows something about it, Legree again has him beat until he can't speak or stand.

Chapters 41-45 Two days later, George Shelby, Jr. arrives at Legree's plantation to buy Tom back, but it is too late. Uncle Tom is dying, and at his death, Shelby Jr. determines to free all his slaves. He then helps Cassy and Emmeline escape. Later, on a river boat headed north, they meet Madame de Thoux whom they find out is George Harris' sister. Upon discussing this, they also discover that Cassy is Eliza's mother. The two women go to Canada where Eliza, George and Harry had settled. Finally, the family is united. Uncle Tom's Cabin helped to turn the tide of public opinion against slavery in the 19th century. After View: This controversial novel was initially written to question slavery and to convince people of its wrongness. It was the first book that brought the problem of Negro slavery in America to the attention of the world. It became not only a bestseller, but a social documentary of the lives of slaves. While living in Ohio just across the river from slave holding Kentucky, Harriet Beecher Stowe had a first hand view of terrified runaway slaves and cruel bounty hunters. After moving back to New England, she decided to write a book about what she had seen. At one point she said, My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying God to let me do a little and cause my cry for them to be heard.1 Mrs. Stowe's cry was heard very loudly in her book that criticized slavery and counted slavery as a national sin. She hoped her novel would bring slavery to a quick and peaceful end, however it only increased northern hostility towards the South.

Straight matter

My first reaction to this book is that it was based much more on religion than I had imagined it to be. As I expected, Stowe's main purpose of the book was to nakedly expose the institution of slavery to America and the rest of the world with the hopes that something would be done about it. To achieve this purpose, she showed us individual instances of slavery in a country that prided itself on its Christianity and its laws protecting freedom. She showed us how absurd slavery is "beneath the shadow of American laws and the shadow of the cross of Christ."

I was also surprised at the various kinds of relationships between whites and blacks of the South. We learn that not all whites were bad and not all blacks were good, but that there were quite a mixture of characters and relationships. That was strength of the book. It's not a melodrama, but shows an evil institution which allows both good and evil and all those in between to exist under it, and how this institution affects the individuals. Legree's plantation, for instance, corrupted anyone who came there. But the reader understands that it is the system that allows this which is the root of the problem, and that, by the way is a North/South problem, not just a Southern problem. She specifically calls on the North at the end of the book to ask them if they can live with the institution of slavery in their country and still call themselves Christians, a wise move.

One of the most memorable characters was, of course, Eva. Stowe was able to give her a true, simple, child's voice which spoke unadulterated truth about the relations and happenings around her:

"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,--and yet she had to hear it crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor Mammy loves her children have seen her cry when she talked about them. And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things are happening, all the time!"

You can't help but say, "Oh, my god, she's right you know!" Eva's is a powerful voice in this book. But Eva's Jesus-like gathering of the slaves before she died was a bit much in its reference to Jesus. How old was Eva?  Are these the words of a little kid?

"I sent for you all, my dear friends," said Eva, "because I love you. I love you all; and I have something to say to you, which I want you always to remember . . . . I am going to leave you. In a few more weeks, you will see me no more--"

The character Eva seemed to be an innocent child telling her family and the world about how she saw slavery which exposed a lot of its evils. But when she turned into a mini Jesus and preached to the slaves before her death as Jesus had preached the disciples before his death, I felt the author had given to too great of a "jump into maturity " to be believable, unless the short life of Eva was really supposed to be a real miracle occurrences. Eva was powerful enough as a real character that looks at slavery from innocent eyes. Her transfiguration into a holy person at the end took some of her punch away.

As a Jesus-character, Tom transcends the book as a Christian hero. An interesting study would be a comparison of Tom and Jesus. One direct parallel, for instance, is the direct temptation that Legree put upon Tom to break him and make him give up his religion for Legree's "church." It parallels to the temptation of Jesus by Satan in the desert.

An important question asked throughout the book was "If we emancipate, are we willing to educate?" In her essay at the end, Stowe chides those white Americans who feel they are doing the slaves a favor by sending them back to Africa so that they can live in the supposedly free country of Liberia. She directly asks the reader, "Would you be willing to take a slave into your Christian home and educate him?" This question went right into every household in the North.

A short introduction at the beginning of my book asked the question whether or not it was "good literary style" for Stowe to talk directly to the reader in the book. I don't think Stowe was trying to create literary work of art other than would serve her purpose of communicating to the reader what exactly slavery was in America at that time. She wrote the book so that she could talk directly to the reader. It may not be good literary style but it reminds the reader that "this books for you."

If you want to look at this book in terms of an interesting piece of literature outside its social and political context, I don't think you have much to look at. The story itself is not interesting (the escape plan of Cassy was the high point), it's packed with religious dogma at every turn (borders on Puritan literature), and you don't see hardly any character development except perhaps for Augustine, but he is so wish washy that his conversion right before his death doesn't give you any insights into his character or human nature. This book is simply expository: it uncovers the institution of slavery. This is what makes the book riveting to read.

Stowe seems to have seen quite a number of individual incidents of slavery for her to be able to write powerful and moving scenes like this one in which the slave George gives Mr. Wilson, a former humane owner, the view of slavery in America from the slave's point of view. This speech by George was the most powerful in the book:

"See here, now, Mr. Wilson," said George, coming up and sitting himself determinately down in front of him; "look at me, now. Don't I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,--look at my body," and the young man drew himself up proudly; "why am I not a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I can tell you. I had a father--one of your Kentucky gentlemen--who didn't think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses, to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and kneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans and screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to his place."

"Well, then?"

"My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister. She was a pious, good girl,--a member of the Baptist Church,--and as handsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had good manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend near me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and heard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked heart, and I couldn't do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir, for wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give no slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a trader's gang, to be sent to market in Orleans,--sent there for nothing else but that,--and that's the last I know of her. Well, I grew up,--long years and years,--no father, no mother, no sister, not a living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping, scolding, starving. Why, sir, I've been so hungry that I have been glad to take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little follow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it wasn't the whipping, I cried for. No, sir; it was for my mother and my sisters.--It was because I hadn't a friend to love me on earth. I never knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to me till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well; you encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to try to make something of myself; and God knows how grateful I am for it. Then, sir, I found my wife; you've seen her,--you know how beautiful she is. When I found she loved me, when I married her, I scarcely could believe I was alive, I was so happy; and, sir, she is as good as she is beautiful. But now what? Why, it now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! Why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and me, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do in Kentucky, and none can say to him, nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, any more than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!"

Powerful! The realization that the slaves are in a country which just recently declared itself "free from oppression" makes the system utterly absurd and contradictory.

With the voice of Augustine, Stowe tells us what slavery is really:

This cursed business, accursed of God and man, what is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,--because I know how, and can do it,--therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, to dirty, to disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod. Quashy shall do my will and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last as I find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-cod, as it stands in our lawny-books, and make anything else of it. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

In painting the United States as the land of freedom or God's country, you cannot forget about slavery. What was it doing in the land of freedom? What was it doing in a country that prided itself in its application to the teachings of the Bible? Slavery's social and political ramifications reach us even today. It is in America's history and its roots. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is a must read for Americans so that we do not forget.

Appreciate The Adventures of Huckle

Why did you choose this particular book? Typical reasons might be:

1.          "All modern American literature comes from on book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

---Ernest Hemingway

2.          The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book by Mark Twain, considered as one of the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective).

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

3.          Because of his delicate familiarity with children's psychology and his thorough understanding of Americans and American society, Mark Twain profoundly and vividly depicts the adventurous story of Huck and Jim and reveals his own views towards the civilized society. This point appeals me to read this novel.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract：

First published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain’s masterpieces and considered as one of the Great American Novels. The novel depicts the adventurous story of a white child Huckleberry Finn and a black slave Jim’s escape to Mississippi to pursue a free life. Through poring over the novel from children’s perspective, this book report tries to reveal the novel’s themes and the author’s views towards human civilization.

Key word:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, children’s perspective, book report

1. Brief Introduction of Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."

2. Plot

Used to living a free and undisciplined life, Huck can’t stand his new life in his adopted mother Douglas’ home, where he has to wear decent clothes everyday and learn endless rules and regulations, which afflict him a lot. One day, Huck’s drunken father comes back after disappearing for over one year. He forces Huck to live with him in a hut among a remote forest. No longer need to learn the decent manners, Huck is fairly contented with life in the forest, fishing and hunting freely. However, he couldn’t stand that his father often beats him when drunken and keeps asking Huck to hand out his share of unexpected fortune, which he got with Tom Sawyer. Therefore, Huck takes the chance that his father goes to the town to sell the wood, makes a false spot that he’s drowned, steal his father’s raft and escapes to Jackson Island.

Jackson Island is a deserted one. However, Huck unexpectedly encounters Jim, an escaped black slave. Later, Huck learns that Jim escaped because he got the news that his mater wanted to sell him again, and that in order to get rid of the slavery fate, Jim escaped to the island. Even though Huck knows it’s against the law to help an escaped slave, they become good friends as they have similar experiences. Realizing that the island is not safe enough, they set about leaving for another state and float along the Mississippi on raft. To avoid the search, they hide among the forests in the daytime and goes out only at night. Finally, overcoming a cornucopia of setbacks, they get to a wide river gulf where they think a safe place. To their disappointment, after consulting the people on the river bank, they find they are matter-of-factly heading for the opposite direction and nearer to the centre of their state. Frustrated, they can do nothing but let it be. For them, only the wide Mississippi and their small raft are their free paradise.

One dawn, they meet two people dispelled by a crowd. Compassionated, Huck and Jim adopt them. After a short time, they find out the two people are liars who later take charge of the raft and sell Jim. Knowing he can’t win over them, Huck secretly leaves the raft for Filps Farm to save Jim. In the farm, Mrs. Filps takes Huck for his nephew Tom. Huck finds out that the man who buys Jim is just Tom’s uncle and the household is waiting for Tom’s visit. Smart enough, Huck takes the chance to play the role of Tom in the farm and prevents Tom’s coming. However, Tom loves adventures and he demands to play the role of Tom’s younger brother Xide. Several days later, they work out an adventurous plan to save Jim. They spread the news that Jim is going to escape, and the whole staff in the farm goes out to hunt for Jim. As they carry the real guns and pistols, Huck and Tom are scared to death and try to escape. In a panic, Tom got a shot and experiences what real adventure is. Only after Jim is taken back does Tom reveal the truth that Jim’s master has announced Jim a free man. At the end of the story, Mrs. Phelps wants to adopt Huck who declined, however. Huck has made up his mind to live a free life where the Indians inhabit.

3. Character Analysis

The main protagonists in this fiction are white teen Huck and black slave Jim. The former escaped from a restraint and hush adopted family to pursue free and undisciplined life, while the latter escaped from his master’s house to get rid of his slavery fate. During their adventures, they develop a deep and unbreakable friendship.

Huck is the central character of the fiction and an upright and rebellious child image in American literary history. At the beginning of the story, he is active and restless. Influenced by racial discrimination of that time, he looks down upon Jim, mocks him, and once even wants to reveal him to the court. However, as they encounter many setbacks and frustrations together, and survive from a narrow escape, Huck develops a deep friendship with Jim and determines to help him attain freedom. The story depicts a lot of Huck’s psychological activities. For instance, there is a scene where Huck wants to reveal Jim to the court. He writes a letter and says “Well, so, go hell.” He then tears the letter immediately. Just as the author once said, “The wholesome soul (democratic idealism) has a conflict with malformed ideology (racial discrimination) and the malformed ideology is wiped out.” Huck’s change of views towards Jim and his actions to help Jim to attain freedom vividly imply the author’s view about racial discrimination—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world.

Jim is a loyal and capable black people. His doomed destiny as a slave that can be sold randomly is the reflection of the pathetic life of black slaves. Different from Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin who is obedient to his sufferings, Jim takes measures to escape from the his master. Under that context, his actions can be considered as brave enough. Besides Jim are full of sympathy and sacrifice spirit. When they are floating along the Mississippi, he takes care of Huck and tries his best to keep this white child from fear and danger. When Tom gets a shot, he puts his safety aside and helps the doctors to save him in the farm dangerous for him. Through depicting these kind-hearted and noble behaviors, the author tries to convey that the blacks are no worse than the white in personality, and that they surpass the white in many aspects, thus negating the theories of racial discrimination utterly. The creation of such an image is to state the requisiteness and urgency of abolishing slavery.

4. Comment:

This book reveals the author’s views towards civilized adult world through children’s perspective—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world..

In children’s perspective, the adult world represents the civilized world. They understand the adult world from their unique point of view. They try to spare feeble efforts to express something, to change something, which are mere silent protest and leads to their despair. Children will inevitably pass their childhood and turn adults who suppress their own children. It is a vicious cycle attributed to human civilization.

At the beginning of the story, although Huck escapes from the civilized education, he still couldn’t keep himself far away from the adult world, which is filled with his drunken father’s screaming, scolding and beating. He knows he couldn’t stand directly against the adults, so he takes a silent step like most other children—after careful planning, he makes up a false scene that he’s dead and leaves the hut. Huck wants to rescue Jim to realize his dream of individual heroism. Jim is an innocent black slave different from the civilized world, a member of a class negated by the so-called civilized white world. The salvation reflects Huck’s revolt against the so-called civilized adult world. At the end of the story, Huck returns to the “civilized” world, but he’s aspiring to live in the west where he thinks he could be free from the rules and manners of the adult world. However, this idealized west doesn’t really exist and it resembles the “despair” that even the dreaming place of a child is “civilized” by the adult.

After reading the whole book, it’s obvious that Huck is a special literary image different from any other literary images—He has some unique features that can’t be explained through adults’ eyes, namely, his virginity. At first, Huck uses his fairy-tale point of view to look at the world, only to find that there is a huge gap between the reality and fairy tale. When he thinks about the world childishly, he finds out the reality is so chaotic and perplexing. As a consequence, he gradually begins to shun the reality and his adventures turn into escape. He tends to reject the so-called civilization of the adult world and aspire for the undeveloped nature. He once even tries to change the dark and chaotic world through his resistance. However, under immense pressure of the adult world, this kind of resistance will collapse, be assimilated or be swallowed.

1)      The voice in the fairy tale

What firstly accompanies children is the voice in the fairy tale, which is truthful

and good-natured. Then, the children are assimilated by adult world, the fairy tale being assimilated into the reality. Huck is no exception. He admires the nature and considers the sound in the forest the most natural. He feels the safest and most comfortable to sleep surrounded by the sound of the nature. “Put on my previous rugged clothes and hide into the big barrel I used to store candies, contented and free.” This is the sound he likes subconsciously. This is the voice in the fairy tale. This is the voice of realness and naturalness.

2)      The voice of the inner heart

Then, what follows the sound in the fairy tale is the voice of the inner heart. This

voice reflects the attitudes and aspiration the children have towards the society. At first, Huck is the son of a drunkard and is often scolded and beaten by his father. He likes sleeping in the forest and eats the food thrown by others, not as normal as other people living in the same society. Then the widow adopts him. Although he begins to accept some ways of normal life, he manages with all these with efforts and feels afflicted to some extent. When he couldn’t stand his new life anymore, he slides off, puts on his ragged clothes and goes back to live in the big barrel. Huck loves the nature and adventures. After he has made up a false scene that he’s dead and heads for his freedom, he meets the black slave Jim. According to the law, not revealing the escaped black slave is considered guilty. However after several mental conflicts and the later accompaniment, Huck realized that Jim is kind-hearted and friendly, and they develop a deep friendship. During their adventures, Huck learns more about the dirtiness, hypocrisy and guilt of the upper class and he becomes more mature. Matter-of-factly, Huck’s adventures are subconscious exploration, guided by the inner heart, to pursue freedom, nature and keep away from the chains and shackles of the so-called civilization.

3)      The trial to make a voice

After the inner voice has accumulated to a certain sum, it’s likely to be released.

It’s a process from exploration to resistance. During their adventures, Huck sees all sorts of so-called civilized life—the floating corpse on the Mississippi, the liars, the aristocracies fighting against each other…Compared with the honest, loyal, kind-hearted Jim, he sees more clearly the sins of the white society. Jim cries anxiously for Huck when he thinks Huck is driven away by the floods. He also helps the doctors to save Tom and remains at the farm which is dangerous for him… All his actions are sparking with the good aspect of the human society. Huck’s trial to help Jim to escape and attain freedom is a decision made after pondering the society and a transformation from exploration to resistance. This embodies that Huck tries to make a sound from the inner heart.

4)      The silent resistance

At last, the children’s subconscious evasion, to some extent, is a form of

resistance. Compared with the chaotic and perplexing voice from the adult world, their voice is too weak. Therefore, they subconsciously resist through evasion, silent resistance. In this silent process, the children wish they could walk out of this chaotic adult world and to an undisturbed world of their own where they can make a voice. Under the guidance of the widow, Huck reads the Bible everyday even though he doesn’t know the meaning at all, and he can’t get across why people should go to the heaven. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he could be with his good friend Tom. He feels the new decent clothes are chains and shackles, restraining him. Therefore when his drunkard father forces him to live in an island with him, he can adapt himself quickly to the new living environment and begins loving living in the nature, where he can smoke, fish and don’t need to read and do homework. It reveals his evasion of the adult world, civilized education.

Conclusion:

Through children’s perspective, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn profoundly and vividly narrates the adventurous story of Huck and Jim, and reveals the author’s views towards racial discrimination—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world. The adult world is usually too perplexed for children to join in. What the adults need to do is to set a good modal for the children and create a equal and harmonious world.

Revolt or Surrender

Summary

Uncle Tom, a slave on the Shelby plantation, is loved by his owners, their son, and every slave on the property. He lives contentedly with his wife and children in their own cabin until Mr. Shelby, deeply in debt to a slave trader named Haley, agrees to sell Tom and Harry, the child of his wife's servant Eliza. Tom is devastated but vows that he will not run away, as he believes that to do so would plunge his master so far into debt that he would be forced to sell every slave.

Just before Tom is taken away, Mrs. Shelby promises him that she will buy him back as soon as she can gather the funds. Tom is sold to Haley, who eventually sells him to a kindly master named Mr. St. Clare.

  Eliza, however, cannot bear to part with her son and escapes the night before he is to be taken from her. She escapes successfully and makes her way to a Quaker village, with a family that harbors slaves. There, she is reunited with her husband George, who lived on a neighboring plantation and has also escaped to flee his master's cruelty. The couple and their son spend a night with the Quaker family before returning to the Underground Railroad.

Tom befriends his new master and especially his young daughter Eva, who shares Tom's deep religious faith and devotion. Eva abhors cruelty and eventually is so overcome with grief over slavery that when she becomes ill, she accepts her impending death peacefully and tells her family and their servants that she is happy knowing that she is going to heaven, where such cruelty does not exist. St. Clare begins to confront the realization that he believes slavery is evil, and he promises Tom that he will fill out forms guaranteeing his freedom in the event of St. Clare's death.

Shortly after Eva dies, her father dies tragically in an accident, and Tom's fate is left entirely in the hands of Marie, St. Clare's selfish and unsympathetic wife. Marie decides to move back to her parents' estate and to sell all the slaves, despite Miss Ophelia's exhortation that Marie should fulfill St. Clare's promise to give Tom his freedom. Marie refuses, and just before he is sold, he writes a letter to the Shelbys (with the help of Mr. Legree) telling them his plight and asking for their help. The letter goes unanswered, and Tom ends up in the hands of Simon Legree, an evil and bitter plantation owner whose philosophy is to work his slaves hard and replace them when they inevitably die just a few years later.

On Legree's plantation, Tom meets two fellow slaves, Emmeline and Cassy. Emmeline is a young mulatto woman sold to Legree at the same time as Tom, and she attempts to befriend the embittered Cassy, who has suffered at the hands of Legree for several years. Cassy has seen her children sold and is so destitute that Tom's pleas that she put her faith and trust in God fall on deaf ears. Legree soon comes to hate Tom after Tom refuses to beat and discipline the other slaves. Legree had planned to turn Tom into a brutal overseer, and when he realizes that Tom will not participate in cruelty, he becomes enraged and takes out his wrath on Tom. Tom becomes discouraged until he has a vision of heaven one night as he is drifting off to sleep. The vision reinvigorates him, and he decides it is his mission to suffer for the other slaves. He regularly fills their cotton baskets at the expense of his own, gives them his food and water, and reads the Bible to them.

Tom's acts of kindness enrage Legree, and when Emmeline and Cassy escape, he demands that Tom tell him everything he knows. Tom admits that he knew of their plans to escape and is aware of their whereabouts, but he refuses to disclose where they are. Legree beats Tom so severely that after a few days, he dies.

Cassy and Emmeline eventually escape, and they happen to wind up on the same northern-bound ferry as George Shelby, who is rooming next to a woman named Madame de Thoux. Through conversation, it is discovered that Eliza Harris is Cassy's daughter, and George Harris is Madame de Thoux's brother. Cassy and Madame de Thoux journey together to Canada, where they are reunited with their family. Madame de Thoux reveals that her husband has left her a large inheritance, and they all move to France together, where George is educated. The family then relocates to Africa, and Cassy's long-lost son, who has been traced, joins them. Topsy moves with Miss Ophelia to New England, then moves to Africa to work as a missionary. George Shelby gives all the servants on the Shelby farm their freedom, and tells them to be Christians and to think of Tom.

Brief introduction of the writer

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), American writer and philanthropist, best-known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52). The book was quickly translated into 37 languages and it sold in five years over half a million copies in the United States.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut, and brought up with puritanical strictness. She had one sister and six brothers. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a controversial Calvinist preacher. Stowe's mother died when she was four. When she was eleven years old, she entered the seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, kept by her elder sister. Four years later she was employed as assistant teacher.

In 1834 Stowe began her literary career when she won a prize contest of the Western Monthly Magazine, and soon she was a regular contributor of stories and essays. Her first book, The Mayflower, appeared in 1843.

In 1836 Stowe married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. Over the next 14 years Stowe had 7 children. In 1850 Calvin Stowe was offered a professorship at Bowdoin, and they moved to Brunswick, Maine. In Cincinnati Stowe had come in contact with fugitive slaves. She learned about life in the South from her own visits there and saw how cruel slavery was. These experiences led Stowe to compose her famous novel, which was first published in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era and later in book form.

Stowe started to publish her writings in The Atlantic Monthly and later in the Independent and in Christian Union. In 1853, 1856, and 1859 Stowe made journeys to Europe and became friends with George Eliot, Elisabeth Barrett Browning, and Lady Byron. However, British public opinion turned against her when she charged Lord Byron with incestuous relations with his half-sister in Lady Byron Vindicated (1870).

Attacks on the veracity of her portrayal of the South led Stowe to publish The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in which she presented her source material. A second anti-slavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), told the story of a dramatic attempt at slave rebellion. Stowe's later works did not gain the same popularity as Uncle Tom's Cabin . She published novels, studies of social life, essays, and a small volume of religious poems. Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Old-Town Folks (1869) and her last novel Poganuc People (1878) were partly based on her husband's childhood reminiscences and are among the first examples of local color writing in New England.

Stowe's mental faculties failed in 1888, two years after the death of her husband. She died on July 1, 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Main characters of the story

The main characters in this story are Uncle Tom, Eliza and George Harris.

Uncle Tom is a pious, trustworthy, slave. He never wrongs anyone and always obeys his master. A very spiritual person, Uncle Tom tries his best to obey the Bible and to do what is right. Eliza is a beautiful slave owned by George Shelby, Sr., the same person who initially owns Tom. Eliza has a son, Harry. Eliza's husband, George Harris, lives on a nearby plantation. George is a brilliant man, and invented a machine that was used in the factory he works in. His owner became jealous and demoted George from his factory job to doing hard labor on the plantation. Setting: These stories takes place throughout the states of Kentucky and Mississippi in the year 1891 in the Plantations and fields and workshops are were the slaves work mostly in sunny and good working conditions.

Chapters 1-5 because his Kentucky plantation was overwhelmed by debt, George Shelby, Sr. makes plans to trade some slaves to a slave dealer named Haley in exchange for debts being canceled. The dealer selects Uncle Tom as payment for the debt. While the two are discussing the possible transaction, Eliza's son, Harry, comes rushing into the room. Haley decides he wants to take Harry also, but Shelby refuses to part with the child. Eliza, overhearing part of the conversation, is frightened and confides her fears to her husband, George Harris. The fact that George's owner is mistreating him, combined with a possible sale of his son persuades George to begin planning to run away. After inferring from an overheard conversation between Mrs. Shelby and Mr. Shelby that they are indeed going to sell Harry and Uncle Tom, Eliza warns Tom and she runs away.

Chapters 6-15 Eliza is able to cross the Ohio River and get to a safe place before Haley's two hired slave-catchers can catch up with her. Although he was warned, Uncle Tom stays on the plantation, leaving it up to God to protect him. At the same time, George Harris begins his escape. Disguised as a Spaniard, George takes his time finding a route on the Underground Railroad. He just happens to go to the same place where Eliza and Harry are being hidden. The family is finally united at a Quaker Settlement. Uncle Tom, meanwhile, is on a boat en route to New Orleans. After gallantly saving the life of young Eva St. Clare, he is rewarded by being bought by her father, Augustine. Augustine is married to a selfish woman who claims to be sick and takes no interest in her daughter. So it is on his return trip from Maine where he has picked up his cousin Ophelia who will care for Eva that Augustine buys Tom.

Chapters 16-30 Unused to Southern customs and slavery, Ophelia tries to bring order to the St. Claire plantation, but the pampered slaves do not cooperate. Eva, who has always been frail, was dying and asks her father to free his slaves. After her death, Augustine was making plans to free the slaves when he was killed while breaking up a fight. Mrs. St. Clare had no intentions of freeing any slaves and had Uncle Tom sold at an auction to a brutal plantation owner named Simon Legree.

Chapters 31-40 For weeks, Uncle Tom tries in vain to please his new master. Legree has enough of Tom's good heartedness after Tom was ordered to beat another female slave and refused. For this show of abstinence, Tom was beaten until he fainted. A slave woman named Cassy helps treat Tom's wounds and afterwards went to Legree's apartment to torment him. Legree is superstitious and believes that Cassy would cast an evil spell on him, and as a result, he was afraid of her. Haunting by the guilty secrets, Legree drinks until he falls asleep. Soon, Cassy along with another slave, Emmeline, run away from the plantation. Convinced that Tom knows something about it, Legree again has him beat until he can't speak or stand.

Chapters 41-45 Two days later, George Shelby, Jr. arrives at Legree's plantation to buy Tom back, but it is too late. Uncle Tom is dying, and at his death, Shelby Jr. determines to free all his slaves. He then helps Cassy and Emmeline escape. Later, on a river boat headed north, they meet Madame de Thoux whom they find out is George Harris' sister. Upon discussing this, they also discover that Cassy is Eliza's mother. The two women go to Canada where Eliza, George and Harry had settled. Finally, the family is united. Uncle Tom's Cabin helped to turn the tide of public opinion against slavery in the 19th century. After View: This controversial novel was initially written to question slavery and to convince people of its wrongness. It was the first book that brought the problem of Negro slavery in America to the attention of the world. It became not only a bestseller, but a social documentary of the lives of slaves. While living in Ohio just across the river from slave holding Kentucky, Harriet Beecher Stowe had a first hand view of terrified runaway slaves and cruel bounty hunters. After moving back to New England, she decided to write a book about what she had seen. At one point she said, My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying God to let me do a little and cause my cry for them to be heard.1 Mrs. Stowe's cry was heard very loudly in her book that criticized slavery and counted slavery as a national sin. She hoped her novel would bring slavery to a quick and peaceful end, however it only increased northern hostility towards the South.

Straight matter

My first reaction to this book is that it was based much more on religion than I had imagined it to be. As I expected, Stowe's main purpose of the book was to nakedly expose the institution of slavery to America and the rest of the world with the hopes that something would be done about it. To achieve this purpose, she showed us individual instances of slavery in a country that prided itself on its Christianity and its laws protecting freedom. She showed us how absurd slavery is "beneath the shadow of American laws and the shadow of the cross of Christ."

I was also surprised at the various kinds of relationships between whites and blacks of the South. We learn that not all whites were bad and not all blacks were good, but that there were quite a mixture of characters and relationships. That was strength of the book. It's not a melodrama, but shows an evil institution which allows both good and evil and all those in between to exist under it, and how this institution affects the individuals. Legree's plantation, for instance, corrupted anyone who came there. But the reader understands that it is the system that allows this which is the root of the problem, and that, by the way is a North/South problem, not just a Southern problem. She specifically calls on the North at the end of the book to ask them if they can live with the institution of slavery in their country and still call themselves Christians, a wise move.

One of the most memorable characters was, of course, Eva. Stowe was able to give her a true, simple, child's voice which spoke unadulterated truth about the relations and happenings around her:

"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,--and yet she had to hear it crying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor Mammy loves her children have seen her cry when she talked about them. And Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things are happening, all the time!"

You can't help but say, "Oh, my god, she's right you know!" Eva's is a powerful voice in this book. But Eva's Jesus-like gathering of the slaves before she died was a bit much in its reference to Jesus. How old was Eva?  Are these the words of a little kid?

"I sent for you all, my dear friends," said Eva, "because I love you. I love you all; and I have something to say to you, which I want you always to remember . . . . I am going to leave you. In a few more weeks, you will see me no more--"

The character Eva seemed to be an innocent child telling her family and the world about how she saw slavery which exposed a lot of its evils. But when she turned into a mini Jesus and preached to the slaves before her death as Jesus had preached the disciples before his death, I felt the author had given to too great of a "jump into maturity " to be believable, unless the short life of Eva was really supposed to be a real miracle occurrences. Eva was powerful enough as a real character that looks at slavery from innocent eyes. Her transfiguration into a holy person at the end took some of her punch away.

As a Jesus-character, Tom transcends the book as a Christian hero. An interesting study would be a comparison of Tom and Jesus. One direct parallel, for instance, is the direct temptation that Legree put upon Tom to break him and make him give up his religion for Legree's "church." It parallels to the temptation of Jesus by Satan in the desert.

An important question asked throughout the book was "If we emancipate, are we willing to educate?" In her essay at the end, Stowe chides those white Americans who feel they are doing the slaves a favor by sending them back to Africa so that they can live in the supposedly free country of Liberia. She directly asks the reader, "Would you be willing to take a slave into your Christian home and educate him?" This question went right into every household in the North.

A short introduction at the beginning of my book asked the question whether or not it was "good literary style" for Stowe to talk directly to the reader in the book. I don't think Stowe was trying to create literary work of art other than would serve her purpose of communicating to the reader what exactly slavery was in America at that time. She wrote the book so that she could talk directly to the reader. It may not be good literary style but it reminds the reader that "this books for you."

If you want to look at this book in terms of an interesting piece of literature outside its social and political context, I don't think you have much to look at. The story itself is not interesting (the escape plan of Cassy was the high point), it's packed with religious dogma at every turn (borders on Puritan literature), and you don't see hardly any character development except perhaps for Augustine, but he is so wish washy that his conversion right before his death doesn't give you any insights into his character or human nature. This book is simply expository: it uncovers the institution of slavery. This is what makes the book riveting to read.

Stowe seems to have seen quite a number of individual incidents of slavery for her to be able to write powerful and moving scenes like this one in which the slave George gives Mr. Wilson, a former humane owner, the view of slavery in America from the slave's point of view. This speech by George was the most powerful in the book:

"See here, now, Mr. Wilson," said George, coming up and sitting himself determinately down in front of him; "look at me, now. Don't I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,--look at my body," and the young man drew himself up proudly; "why am I not a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I can tell you. I had a father--one of your Kentucky gentlemen--who didn't think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses, to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and kneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans and screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to his place."

"Well, then?"

"My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister. She was a pious, good girl,--a member of the Baptist Church,--and as handsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had good manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend near me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and heard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked heart, and I couldn't do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir, for wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give no slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a trader's gang, to be sent to market in Orleans,--sent there for nothing else but that,--and that's the last I know of her. Well, I grew up,--long years and years,--no father, no mother, no sister, not a living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping, scolding, starving. Why, sir, I've been so hungry that I have been glad to take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little follow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it wasn't the whipping, I cried for. No, sir; it was for my mother and my sisters.--It was because I hadn't a friend to love me on earth. I never knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to me till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well; you encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to try to make something of myself; and God knows how grateful I am for it. Then, sir, I found my wife; you've seen her,--you know how beautiful she is. When I found she loved me, when I married her, I scarcely could believe I was alive, I was so happy; and, sir, she is as good as she is beautiful. But now what? Why, it now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! Why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and me, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do in Kentucky, and none can say to him, nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, any more than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!"

Powerful! The realization that the slaves are in a country which just recently declared itself "free from oppression" makes the system utterly absurd and contradictory.

With the voice of Augustine, Stowe tells us what slavery is really:

This cursed business, accursed of God and man, what is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,--because I know how, and can do it,--therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, to dirty, to disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod. Quashy shall do my will and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last as I find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-cod, as it stands in our lawny-books, and make anything else of it. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

In painting the United States as the land of freedom or God's country, you cannot forget about slavery. What was it doing in the land of freedom? What was it doing in a country that prided itself in its application to the teachings of the Bible? Slavery's social and political ramifications reach us even today. It is in America's history and its roots. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is a must read for Americans so that we do not forget.