Eighteenth Century Religious Change in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Moby Dick

The anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe was written at a time when slavery was a largely common practice among Americans. It not only helped lay the foundation for the Civil War but also contained many themes that publicized the evil of slavery to all people. The book contains themes such as the moral power of women, human right, and many more. The most important theme Stowe attempts to portray to readers is the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity. She makes it very clear that she does not believe slavery and Christianity can coexist and that slavery is against all Christian morals. She believes no Christian should allow the existence or practice of slavery.

Since Christianity rests on the principle of universal love, no Christian should tolerate slavery. If all people were to put the principle into practice it would be impossible for the oppression and enslavement of one section of humanity. Throughout the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe has illustrated the fact that the system of slavery and principles of Christianity oppose each other. The novel exposes the evils of slavery—its incompatibility with Christian principles—and points the way to its transformation through Christian love through the characterization of some characters in the novel. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Christian principles of forgiveness, compassion, and belief in an afterlife is embodied though the character

Whenever people are enduring a tough time, they have different ways of handling the situation that they are in. Some people lose hope and stay in the situation that they are in, some turn to sports, and some people use their faith to pray and act as a good Christian to get through their tough times. Published in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin heavily and frequently turn to God in order to pray that they get out of their situations which is being slave. The novel shows the escape of two slaves named George and Eliza and the journey of the most moral and devout Christian in this book the main character, Uncle Tom. The concept and ideology of religion in Uncle Tom’s plays a large role in the novel because it religion influences the actions of the slaves and other characters on numerous occasions and it provides a better sense of identity for the slaves. In addition, after reading this classic novel, it is evident that the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, is heavily against the practice of slavery. Lastly, this novel goes against some of the basic stereotypes regarding slavery.

Henry Melville also critique’s the practice of Christianity in the 19th century America in his work “Bartleby the Scrivener”. Melville illustrates the idea of a higher spiritual purpose in relation to societal standards. It also questions what makes a person good ideally in the eyes of society, which relates to how society views a religious person. As religion, such as Christianity, defines how people interacted with others and what actions were associated with a Christian person in 19th century American Society. Melville questions the idea that

One hundred years after Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the poet Langston Hughes called the novel, “the most cussed and discussed book of its time.” Hughes’s observation is particularly apt in that it avoids any mention of the novel’s literary merit. George Orwell famously called it “the best bad book of the age.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin is arguably no Pride and Prejudice or Scarlet Letter. Leo Tolstoy is one of the few critics who praise it unabashedly, calling Uncle Tom’s Cabin a model of the “highest type” of art because it flowed from love of God and man. So why has it been called “a verbal earthquake, an ink-and-paper tidal wave”? How and why has it been so influential?

In the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, proposes that the Bible was utilized to justify the system of slavery. Stowe proposes in her novel that in the 1800’s, slave owners believed bible verses excused brutal slavery. Stowe also made the audience realize this with the characters she used in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe allowed her readers to view how slavery and religion shaped the society of the 1800’s.

The first section of the book is titled comparative studies. This section is comprised of the first two chapters. Chapter one is aptly named history and methods. Chapter two has been dubbed comparative studies, scholarship, and theology. This section

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Evangeline St Clare and Uncle Tom are two characters portrayed in the text as Christ figures through their similar actions as spiritual guides and in their contrasting physical descriptions and deaths in order to resonate with a religious audience to create a more romanticized novel that influences the readers to a greater extent in order to aid the book in being an abolitionist piece of literature.

In the novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriett Beecher Stowe is on a detailed mission to bring light to the immorality of slavery that contrasts Christian beliefs. She repeatedly addresses the nineteenth century audience often in a direct manner, using many stereotypical characters and dramatizations of fiction that fit well with the nineteenth century’s love of melodrama and unambiguous morality. These intentional characters and events were written to address a vast audience of all kinds within the century, from mother-daughter relationships to independent women of the United States. Though she focused more on the American white woman, as she strongly viewed them to be persuasive

In Jane Tompkins’s rich and strong essay, “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History”, she attests that the text of Stowe’s novel calls readers to employ the Christian format of love and compassion. Further, she claims that Stowe intended an analogous meaning between her novel and the Bible. Certainly, examination of the text in Uncle Tom’s Cabin determines that these allusions are implied. Throughout, there are continually subtle and blatant indications in the work that supports the suggestion that such themes were central to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Certainly, Stowe’s novel is noteworthy, in that it employs a rich and powerful text that’s format calls its readers to salvation. Indeed, Stowe shows the radical truth that freedom can only be won by Christian charity.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, is often considered to be one of the greatest pieces of written work in American literature. Written in 1851 this influential novel acts as a split in a road with infinite possibilities for the reader to interpret it. Throughout the story Melville reveals multiple themes to the reader, the most prevalent I find to be man’s limitless search for knowledge and control. Melville uses the literary device symbolism, to communicate the theme of mans limitless search for knowledge and control to the reader in Moby dick, through Ahab the captains unhealthy obsession with the “Great white Whale”, and Queequegs Coffin.

Known as the “father of modern liberal theology,” Friedrich Schleiermacher was a German theologian, philosopher and biblical scholar who directed his attention on the nature of religious experience from the viewpoint of the individual and human nature itself (Mariña 3). Influenced by German Romanticism, Schleiermacher attempted to settle the criticisms of the Enlightenment with conventional Protestant Christianity (Crouter 261). By doing so, he abandoned the pietistic Moravian theology that had neglected to gratify his growing reservations and he embraced the sensible outlook of Christian Wolff and Johann Salomo Semler. He then became accustomed with the methods of historical criticism of the New Testament and of Johann Augustus Eberhard, from whom he attained an adoration of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Consequently, he began applying thoughts from the Greek thinkers to a reform of Immanuel Kant’s system (Mariña 3). On this basis, this essay will articulate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s understanding of religion and its association to Christianity as expressed in Speech I: Defense and Speech II: The Nature of Religion of his work On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. The essay will explore Schleiermacher’s refutation of three notions of religion held by the despisers, clarify his recognition of the true religion with feeling and describe his understanding of the association involving religion and Christianity.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the most far-reaching and profound literature work in the world. Through the whole novel, the intelligent uses of both circumstance and chance successfully depict characters’ destinies and the slavery.

“The Lord himself wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and l was an instrument in his hand.” said Stowe. This quote illustrates that the main ideas of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was both from religious and political aspects of the author.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is mostly told from the perspective of Ishmael, however, the story is actually retold. As the ship journey furthers into the ranges of the oceans, Ishmael recounts the honorable profession whaling and attempts to share all of his knowledge with the readers. He does not intend to share the gaps of knowledge in his ship’s pursuits, or whaling as a whole, rather the opposite. Although attempts are made to share knowledge, two intertwined themes are present: the limits of knowledge and the role of religion in answering questions beyond those limits. Ishmael sets himself apart from the rest of the novel’s characters by attempting to raise awareness about the whaling industry’s history and realities with facts and measurements. But the same evidence he uses to prove underlying truths of whaling also act as limits to how humans understand whales. Other characters, and Ishmael on occasion, either use or literally are manifestations of religious references, and these