"Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art ever written about American slavery"-Alfred Kazin "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's cabin may...prove a startling experience"-Edmund Wilson In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery ...
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"Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art ever written about American slavery"-Alfred Kazin "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's cabin may...prove a startling experience"-Edmund Wilson In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery message resonated with readers around the world at its time of publication. With unashamed sentimentality and expressions of faith, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom's Cabin tells the story of the lives of African American slaves from a Kentucky plantation; The master's maid, Eliza; her son, Henry; and, of course, Uncle Tom, the righteous and kind protagonist at the center of the book. When Arthur Selby, a Kentucky slave-owner decides to sell his slaves due to dire financial turns, Eliza runs away with her son, and Tom is sold to a slave trader named Haley. On a Mississippi river boat, Tom's fortunes are revered after he rescues Eva, a young white girl, from drowning. Eva's kind father is so moved by Tom's bravery that he buys him from Haley and brings him into his New Orleans home. In the series of calamitous events that follow, Tom ultimately finds himself in the bondage of the diabolical master Simon Legree. Still provoking controversies to this day, this is one of American literature's most important works of social justice. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin is both modern and readable.
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A book everyone should read. Even President Lincoln had something good to say about this book.
bookishwench
Aug 3, 2009
Stereotyped? I say moving
Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel was written witha specific purpose: to refute the common thinking of her time that slavery was acceptable because it was more often benficial than harmful.
Stowe's many tales of slaves and slave-owners, good, bad and in-between, are woven together as their lives intermingle, and show plainly and fairly all sides of the question as they existed in her day. And bring the reader, while moved with compassion for the oppressed, to the ineveitable conclusion of the evil of the entire system.
Themes of Christianity runeverywhere through the novel, giving hope to the victims and conviction to the oppressors, as well as to the silent observers.
I couldn't get the images of hopelessness out of my mind long after putting the book down. I highly reccommend it, but caution the reader that the 'n-word' appears quite often.
