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Uncle Tom's Cabin Literary Analysis

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“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”

-Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Indeed, we read novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, or any

novel that is not from this era to add to our knowledge from the past. But are all of the

books categorized as classics read to learn about our past really worth our time? Narrowing

it down, in this case, is Uncle Tom’s Cabin worth our time? Does it have anything to offer in

the setting of a Humanities 8 class? In fact, is this book, defined as a “classic” and taught to

the emerging generations, an example of an actual classic? What classifies a literary piece as

a classic? Jane Tompkins defines it as although “with a few exceptions, all succes d'estime” …show more content…

Therefore, Stowe did an admirable job artfully crafting her use of sentimentality

to prove her point and get across her message of abolition in this book, much to the contrary of

Baldwin’s claims. The protest novel genre is questioned by Baldwin because “speak of a ‘new’

society” is meaningless, and more “as a desire of the oppressed.” Baldwin asserts that Uncle

Tom’s Cabin is idealistic in the sense that the oppressor and the oppressed live together. This

further proves that the protest novel genre is valid since the idea that the oppressor and the

oppressed living together is a basic fact about slavery as basically all slaves lived with their

masters. There is nothing “idealistic,” or “romantic” about this ideal as Baldwin puts it, since it

was a very real aspect of slavery. Baldwin pushes aside this book, calling it “self-righteous” and

in a nutshell, irrelevant; but there is so much more to this book than what can be seen on the

outside. Picking this book apart by pointing out its flaws will not make the importance and

relevance of it today any less in the big picture based on supposedly flawed minute details.

So, all in all, is Uncle Tom’s Cabin fit for study today? Well, yes. In today’s world,

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