Uncle Tom's Cabin Slavery

Slavery. It used to be a widespread issue. Many folks had different opinions. Unfortunately, those different opinions led to severe problems. Tension within the United States. The Civil War. Floggings. Executions. These are but a few. However, during the grief and pain of war, there was still hope. This hope took upon itself the form of a little woman, namely Harriet Beecher Stowe. Harriet was strictly opposed to the horrors of slavery and, utilizing her gift for prose, spoke out against it with her most popular and influential novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the book, there is Uncle Tom, the main character whom the story most closely follows, who is a slave. Yet he is also a devout Christian. As the story progresses, it is revealed that slaves …show more content…
The novel is about slavery and its evils, obviously. Uncle Tom, the titular character, is a slave whose body belongs to Mr. Shelby and his wife, Mrs. Shelby. However, Tom’s soul belongs to Jesus, as he is one of those people who would nobody would ever doubt is a Christian. Unfortunately, Mr. Shelby has to trade Tom to pay off a debt. Another slave, a young boy named Harry, was going to be sold, but he fled the farm with his mother, Eliza. As the story continues, Tom eventually makes his way to the household of Augustine St. Clare, and quickly befriends his daughter, Eva. Eva and Tom aid each other in their Christian life, and Eva makes her father promise to set all the slaves free. Eva contracts an illness, and after a while, peacefully dies while receiving a vision of Heaven. St. Clare also passes away later after he is brutally stabbed. His wife, Marie St. Clare, however, is a self-absorbed woman who does not let the slaves run free after her husband’s death. She sells Tom to a selfish and cruel slave-owner named Simon Legree. While at Legree’s plantation, Tom is whipped and abused because of his belief in God and his compassion and encouragement to the other slaves. His faith is tested by the tribulations of the plantation, but Tom’s faith is renewed when he experiences a vision of Jesus and Eva in Heaven. Eventually, Tom is brutally beaten to death by Legree’s slave overseers, but not before he gloriously declares his forgiveness of his murderers. In the end of the novel, Cassy and Emmeline, two of Legree’s slaves, escape and meet with Eliza, who turns out to be Cassy’s long-lost daughter, and her family. Cassy, Emmeline, Eliza, Eliza’s child Harry, Eliza’s husband George, and George’s sister travel to France and then later to Liberia to live out their lives in