Summary Of Uncle Toms Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and the author of Uncle Toms Cabin, a book that disputes one of the most controversial issues of all time— slavery. Born into a family of theologians and preachers, Stowe grew up in Connecticut, and she had very little contact or knowledge on the reality of slavery in the South. Stowe was soon exposed to the severity in a city near Kentucky, which is where she began to see firsthand how poorly slaves were treated; and the more that was exposed to her, the more horrified she became. Stowe was then influenced to write a novel about the crimes that she was witnessing. Stowe’s novel, Uncle Toms Cabin uses Evangeline St. Claire, a young girl, to persuade innocent and not yet prejudiced children …show more content…
Clare symbolizes the compassion and unprejudiced views that children can have. Through Eva’s imperative traits of innocence and morality, she has the ability to absorb the world around her with fresh eyes and ears, and therefore make it viable for all other children to do the same. Even before officially meeting Eva, Uncle Tom was able to infer that she was a righteous person when it mentions that “To him she seemed something almost divine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out upon him from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or looked down upon him over some ridge of packages, he half believed that he saw one of the angels stepped out of his New Testament“ (124). Merely Eva’s appearance is enough to win the favors of others, and moreover her angelic appearance portrays the innocence and morality that she possesses. With her pure and naive conscience, Eva has the ability to influence children and therefore depict Stowe’s point that slavery is immoral. With Eva’s simple and easygoing personality, she becomes an apt character to demonstrate the corruptness of slavery and further persuade her point to children …show more content…
Stowe wants to encourage children to acknowledge that slavery is an immoral and unchristian value. It is imperative for Stowe to target younger audiences since doing that changes the opinions of future generations because kids are the future. Through influencing and persuading the younger generation that slavery is wrong, the future generations will share the same opinion on the previously controversial act. Stowe wants future generations (such as ours) to be influenced against racism and hate of African Americans, from the book. Though, on a wider scale, Perhaps Stowe wants to encourage the children to use their education and the “power of the pen” to change and fight unjust societal values. Education is a powerful tool in influencing society, so Stowe wants the children to become Upstanders and fight against what they don’t believe is right, even if their parents do. In order to effectively express her very important beliefs on slavery and the fact that it should be completely abolished, Stowe uses Eva, one of the few morally straight characters in the book to persuade open minded