UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

One book that can make you laugh,

One book that can make you cry,

One book that can invoke feelings,

And yet make you ponder – why,

While spreading the message of equality,

It can challenge your anti-racist mentality,

One book that can bring about a drastic change,

In the hearts of men who detest a darker color range,

One book which preaches ant-racism,

And disperses knowledge like a prism,

Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American,

It is Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Uncle Tom, the protagonist, is to be my favourite character. He is a robust black slave who is sold by his kind master Shelby to slave-trader Haley, and then to a kind prosperous St. Claire family before being bought by Simon Legree.

Throughout the novel, Uncle Tom’s idealistic character emotionally appeals to the reader. He is described by Frederick Douglass as “a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery”.

Uncle Tom is indeed an insignia of optimism. His faith in God is intense and unrivalled. From learning to read the Bible to writing letters to his kin, he consistently endeavors to improve himself. He also hopes for freedom someday, and thus says to his master St. Clair, “I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have them mine, than have them the best and somebody else’s.”

The novel also cites his inherent virtues of goodness, piety, passiveness and forbearance that are unshaken even when subjected to unspeakable brutality. In fact, he not only advises and inspires fellow slaves but is also grudgingly admired by his enemies.

Towards the close, his cruel master Simon Legree orders his slaves, Quimbo and Sambo, to beat him because he refuses to betray the whereabouts of two fugitive female slaves. But his endurance to the beating even tames those embittered slaves, who thereafter become true Christians. Now, in case you haven’t read the book, i prefer to keep the climx “what happened to Uncle Tom” a secret.