Uncle Tom's Cabin Book Report

Superior Essays
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a historical book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She describes her own experiences about slavery and ones that she has witnessed in the past through the text in her novel. Harriet grew up in Cincinnati where she had a very close look at how slavery was. Located on the Ohio River across from the slave state Kentucky, the city was filled with former slaves and their masters. Uncle Tom is a high-minded, hard working Christian black slave to a nice and kind family named the Shelbys. The Shelbys had difficulties with money and were in debt, they had no choice but to sell Tom to a slave trader. Young George Shelby does not want Tom to go but he promises that someday he will buy Tom so he can become free again. Harriet’s novel reveals that Tom suffered from slavery, had a religious fortitude, and even in slavery he had freedom.
Throughout Stowe 's novel Tom encounters a lot of pain and suffrage from being held into slavery. The Shelbys sell Tom to a slaveholder named Simon Legree. He is a cruel master and wants to break Tom. One day, Legree tells Tom to whip a former slave in order to make him a
…show more content…
Slavery was a time where people suffered harsh beatings, working all day and night, and an era where no one wants to go back. It was a time where life was not fair for people and where half of America begged for equality. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written for a specific purpose, to demonstrate the “living dramatic reality” of slavery, as author Harriet Beecher Stowe put it. Many people, especially those in the North, had no clue what was happening on the other side of the country. They did not know the day-to-day hardships of African Americans living in slavery, and literary works could provide these details in the form of exciting, dramatized stories. Back then it was easy being free and turning into a slave the next day. This novel acknowledges Toms suffrage, religious fortitude, and

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Union Falls 1.Explain the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the slavery issue. An abolitionist Harriet Beecher wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin the book. The novel illustrated slavery.…

    • 1937 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uncle Toms Cabin Thesis

    • 1534 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Simon legree, a cruel slave owner demands Tom to whip Eliza And her sons. Legree ends up not liking Tom because he didn 't listen to his order to whip them for escaping. Eliza and her sons eventually try to cross into Canada, while Tom is doing everything he can to help them be free along the way. Tom and his perspective of things change positively understanding the treatment and troubles of slavery along the way. Legree orders people to kill Tom.…

    • 1534 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Uncle Toms Cabin Quotes

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The other slave to be sold is none other than Uncle Tom, who is a middle-aged man with a family on the farm. Between the two stories, the level of intensity is generally the same since Eliza and her son get chased down by a malicious group of slave hunters hired by Mr. Haley to capture her and Uncle Tom goes through two masters of different temperaments. One master by the name of Augustine St. Clare, was kind and caring towards his colored brethren, especially since Uncle Tom saved his angelic daughter Eva from drowning in a river while they were riding a boat (Stowe Chapter XIV). Since Eva and Uncle Tom had become friends, Eva begged her father to buy Uncle Tom to give Uncle Tom happiness. Thus, when Uncle Tom had gotten to the St. Clare house, he was well taken care of and cared for his dear friend Eva until one day Eva had become ill and died only to be followed by her father not too long after because Mr. St. Clare got stabbed and…

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Who Is Uncle Tom's Cabin?

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Due to the combination of history and the fact that laws could not remain neutral the controversial debate between the North and the South over slavery began to worsen. The Fugitive Slave Law Act of 1850 angered Northerners so much it ended up influencing them to voice their outrage. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a white abolitionist woman who changed the outlook for African Americans by protesting for slavery through this novel. By being a white woman Harriet Beecher Stowe surprised the world, as it was uncommon for women to speak out politically, especially over racial matters. Through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe was able to show her readers slavery through a white individuals perspective and the wrong doings against…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to Stowe, her only reason for writing the story was “to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race.” The novel had sanctioned colonization rather than abolition which alarmed many northern radicals. In the south, the novel was seen as propaganda; whereas in the north, it was interpreted as a moral romance. Harriet Beecher Stowe was very important because her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin displayed the cruelty and inhumane practices done to chattel slaves in the upper and lower south to the public…

    • 1430 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Over time, sectional tensions began to rise over the institution of slavery and the basic freedom being denied towards blacks. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel attacked the institution more aggressively than any other novel before it. Not only was it a novel, but also a sermon. Stowe’s basis for her argument against slavery was the love and compassion that were supposedly the fundamental ideas behind Christianity. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, author Harriet Beecher Stowe uses a variety of characters, such as slave owners, women, and Christian figures, in order to cover the broad demographic spectrum of the 19th century United States in order to appeal to the masses and affect each reader in a specific and different way to ultimately expose the brutality, inequality, and immorality of the “peculiar institution” of…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin changed how Americans viewed slavery and how the system would treat people as property. In this book there are two plot lines that the story focuses on Tom, a strong, religious man, with a family, and Eliza who is Harry’s mother. Eliza who heard that her son is being sold off, she runs away and almost gets caught, but she is later reunited with her family and they travel north to Canada. Tom chose not to run away because he wanted to protect his family, but later on he is sold South. The novel ends where Tom and Eliza both escape from slavery; Eliza and her family reach Canada, but Tom’s freedom comes with death where he is whipped to death for not giving up information on where two fugitive women were hiding.…

    • 138 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Thesis

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in the year of 1852. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a famous author and an abolitionist. She was also in a group full of people that despised slavery and slave catchers. In the book she described the sin of slavery and tried to convince many people to stand up and stop slavery. The book, published in 1852 sold over 300,000 copies in just the first year.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Banned

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book that has been both criticized and praised. Some have even gone so far to say that it "started a war and ended slavery," (www.washingtonpost.com). The book follows the journey of slave named Tom as he is repeatedly sold and transferred from master to master. It exposes the horrors of slavery. Families torn apart, innocent slaves beaten until killed, young girls raped by male masters.…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a novel that helped lay the foundation for the civil war. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author seeked to communicate to the readers that slavery is inhumane and should be abolished. The author does this by using the slave’s personal incidents, religion, and key characters. Stowe looks to communicate to her audience that slavery is morally wrong by using the slave’s personal incidents along with the way masters treated them, in which many cases they were forced to do things they didn’t want to do.…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Rhetoric

    • 1360 Words
    • 6 Pages

    With the theme of human rights, Stowe targeted an anticipated audience of white women-- particularly mothers. She maneuvered the typical devotion of this group to family and home by emphasizing the destructive effects of slavery on families (“Uncle”). Her writing style and use of rhetoric served as a source of appeal for her novel’s varying audiences (Bracher). The themes present in Uncle Tom’s Cabin were meant to be debatable and to spark discussion over the issue of slavery. More specifically, they asked the prominent question of whether human slavery is right or wrong.…

    • 1360 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When Uncle Tom first decided to stay with the master, Mr. Shelby, he stayed with other slaves in his cabin at the plantation owned by Mr. Shelby. However, when he finally died after beat, he was still in his cabin at the plantation owned by Mr. Legree. The author skillfully managed the places of the whole events: started in the cabin and ended in the cabin with different settings of the events and characters. Although Uncle Tom experienced the different environment of the slavery after he was sold by Mr. Shelby, such as the relative kind master, Mr. St. Clare and his daughter, Eva, the tragic ending of the slaves finally did not change. The author also set the coincidence with brilliant method.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and was published in 1862. Uncle Tom’s Cabin first began when a slave trader went to Mr. Shelby’s farm in Kentucky and demanded Uncle Tom to be traded. Dan Haley knew that Tom was responsible, religious, and capable of doing everything. Tom has a wife, and kids on the farm. While Mr. Haley and Mr. Shelby are talking a young boy named Harry walks into the room.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To compare apples to oranges, Legree was never concerned with comfort of his owned people. He abused them; he was outlandishly cruel. But it can also be argued that in spite of his cruelness, he still treated Tom better than his other slaves by wanting to elevate his position within the household. When Tom did not do as he wanted, however, Legree responded by beating him mercilessly. All three owners, despite their differing views on slavery, where very much similar in that they owned people; people who they inevitably ended up mistreating, either by means of selling them or actually beating them to death.…

    • 1547 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Not wanting to do this because this was his fate and Mr. Shelby had a lot of trust in him, he just fell onto his chair and cried out (pg.46). Not only did the night show how Aunt Chloe feel about Uncle Tom being sold, but in the morning his children also showed their pain by trying to hide their tears behind their hands (pg.112) and Mrs. Shelby also went to their cabin and paid her respects towards Tom and cried about him leaving with Aunt Chloe and her children (pg. 112-113). George Shelby, Mr. and Mrs. Shelby’s son, also went and said his goodbyes to Uncle Tom, and after seeing that Mr. Haley had chained Tom, he threatened to tell his father and to purchase Tom back (pg. 118). Taking Uncle Tom from his family showed a great evil of slavery because of how much suffering was shown through each person that knew him and how it showed him being separated from where he had grown…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays