Uncle Tom 's Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe uses the character of Augustine St. Clare to play a very important role in expressing her views of abolition to the reader throughout the novel. St. Clare is, in himself, a huge contradiction of a character, as his way of life is supported by the same system that he despises, slavery. St. Clare professes multiple times in the book that slavery is wrong, yet he holds slaves and refuses to release them, making him a hypocrite whose morals are right, mainly because of his mother, but he is unwilling to do the right thing. St. Clare symbolizes some of the southern slave owners at the time who knew that slavery was a sin and an act against God, but refused to stand up and stop it. St. Clare is such an essential character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and he is an important part of the overall message of the novel and Stowe’s interjection of her abolitionist views that are throughout the novel.

Stowe expresses the terrors of slavery, by giving the reader insight into what life was like as a slave in the south; and through this, it shows how inhumane slavery was. For example, when Uncle

The book revealed New England’s religious attitudes and mentality, as well as their moral code and way of life. In colonial New England, people lived in towns where everyone knew each other and neighbors often relied on each other for trading goods and support in one’s time of need. This early American society found great importance in devotion to God and their Puritan faith, which they upheld over everything. It was widely believed at the time that falling into illness, just as Katherine Branch had was God’s way of punishing sinners. Godbeer states, “God might have inflicted the symptoms as punishment for sin; ideally this would prompt repentance and reformation as the inflicted person recalled the moral lapse that had provoked God’s anger” (17).

The central theme of both John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” and Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, is the prospect of religion in one’s everyday life influencing their future. In order to build up their ideas about acting in a way that pleases the Lord, both these authors use repetition, diction, allusions, and metaphors as a way to build momentum in their speech as they allude to teachings of the bible and their diction install a notion of uncertainty. However, while Winthrop uses his notion of uncertainty to give the audience a sense of security, in their endeavors to the Americas, with the prospect of religion, Edwards does the opposite and makes the audience fear God even more as he talks about his

One of the things Harriet Beecher Stowe is known for in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is her many literary devices in her writing that have hidden meanings which emphasizes her abolitionist views. She is an effective author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin because her literary devices such as symbolism reiterate her very strong abolitionist views. Firstly, an example of Harriet Beecher Stowe using a character to help her anti-slavery views is during a dialogue between Evangeline and her father, Augustine St. Clare. Her father calls her over to show a statuette that he had bought just for her, and Eva tells him about her feelings that have been suppressed. She says to him, “‘O, that’s what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and to never have any pain,-never suffer anything,-not even hear a sad story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain or sorrow, all their lives; … Papa, isn’t

Upon returning from pillaging another English town, an Indian offers Mary Rowlandson a “gift” of a Bible, which he had stolen from a dead English townsperson. The usage of the word “plunder” connoted the violent force used to obtain the Bible. This enhances the significance of the irony of Rowlandson overlooking the fact that someone was murdered in order for her to receiver her “gift.” Rowlandson’s Calvinist views, which made her believe that God brought the Bible to her, outweighed any sympathy for nay anonymous English person, and the intended demographic (late 15th century Calvinists) of readers of this captivity narrative would have agreed. An alternative example presents itself when Rowlandson attempts to convince Goodwife Joslin, a very pregnant captive who was becoming impatient and wanted to go home, not to run away., “I wished her not to run away by any means […] We opened the Bible and lightened on Psalm 27 […] “Wait on the Lord, Be good of courage, and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord.” (4); Rowlandson utilizes her Bible as a tool to steer others into the light of God, whether it means deteriorating their own safety and health, proving that she will lack sympathy for humans in favor of devotion to her God.

Religion, like many things, is taught and learned, passed through the generations, written in many forms and spoken in many languages all around the world, yet how one perceives and uses it, gives religion a further meaning. For many years now in places as Africa where Kingsolver places the novel, religion isn’t taken as seriously, as it is idealized in the western world, it is in different forms than what westerners are used too, but unwillingly, individuals are forced into the westerns way of teaching, compelling them to believe it can fix all their problems. In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver criticizes the way religion affects an individual’s arrogance, political stance, and guilt, due to a belief that religion can fix

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.” Whether provoked by doctor’s grim diagnosis or inspired by something else, these words of Flannery O’Connor are a good example of how one should always follow this rule in order to meet their expectations of life. However, it is in our human nature to think, dream, and imagine things that are far from our knowledge. O’Connor’s “Good Country People” tells the story of Hulga, a girl with an artificial leg who loses it after blindly believing the lies of astute Manley Pointer, a Bible salesman. Using the example of Hulga, “Good Country People” proves how unrealistic expectations can lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. This happens because faith does not play a role

"What Mr. Hooper perceives on the faces of the spectators is a shadow of his own veil. The darkness which envelops his heart blinds him to the meaning of Christian love, even though it now attends him in the person of Elizabeth, who [...] is a symbol of consecration to God. With a distrust of power of redemptive love, human or divine, man virtually commits himself to the devil." (Stein 392).

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” tells the tale of a man whose Puritan beliefs were shaken to the core because reality turned out to be much different than he was taught in catechism. Goodman Brown showed readers how much he believed in his family’s goodness when he claimed “We have been a race of honest men and good Christians… We are a people of prayer, and good works, to boot, and abide no such wickedness” (Hawthorne 247). Because of this, Brown is surprised when he comes to know that people he thought were holy were in fact advocates for the devil and sinners- especially his wife Faith. People that he held in the highest regard were nothing but the lowest of the low to him now. He becomes surly, loses all faith in humanity, and develops a bitter worldview after this revelation.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his short story “Young Goodman Brown,” details the frailty of human morality when he has the story’s protagonist (Goodman Brown) journey through the forest on All Hollows Eve to witness/participate in a witches’ Sabbath just to see what evil/sin is all about. During Young Goodman Brown’s journey, his faith is shaken as he witnesses those he respects the most also journeying to and participating in the witch’s Sabbath. In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates that an idealistic faith in our fellow man’s righteousness could lead to disappointment, distrust, and fear.

Once meeting his destination, Young Goodman Brown is accused by a man “in grave and decent attire” (Hawthorne 1289) of being late. “Faith kept me back awhile” (1290) is Goodman Brown’s excuse. Though Goodman Brown’s delicate wife Faith did try to her best ability to keep him from going on this journey, she may not have been the only culpriate. We all have those peculiar moments when something about which we have a bad feeling pulls us back. That thing is our Faith, and Goodman Brown’s didn’t want him going on this journey.

J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind – in Chapter 8: ‘You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’”

As previously mentioned, Stowe composed Uncle Tom’s Cabin to express the various views of slavery, and how it impacted the lives of those affected by this lifestyle. Growing up in this century, Stowe found the institution of slavery to be corrupt, with “the country requiring her complicity in a system she thought was unjust and immoral” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin). As Stowe did not believe in the Fugitive Slave Law—which required everyone to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves—she chose to hide runaway slaves, and her family promoted her drive to aid those in need. Stowe accomplished this feat through housing, feeding, and smuggling slaves to legal freedom in Canada, because it was the Christian thing to do.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a novel written in times of unrest where slavery was a controversial topic and women 's rights were still suffering. Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed the grim reality of slavery and showed the importance for women to gain a societal role beyond the domestic domain. The reading contains a number of major characters throughout the novel. The two most notable characters we will discuss is Mrs. Shelby and Marie St. Clare. Throughout this paper we will compare and contrast these two characters and give specific examples to illustrate the similarities and differences between these two unique individuals.