A Critical Analysis of Uncle Tom's Cabin DOCX

Title	A Critical Analysis of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Author	Yna Johanne
Pages	3
File Size	18.8 KB
File Type	DOCX
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InnahJohanee P. Alaman I-BAE Eng42 WF (11:30 pm-1:00 pm) Prof.Genevieve Quintero May 22, 2015 Uncle Tom as a Transcendentalist Protest Figure An Analysis of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 classic novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Life Among the Lowly is one of the key novels that triggered the American Civil War. Activating anti-slavery forces in the North and spreading widespread anger in the South; Uncle Tom's Cabin is not a product of social commentary alone, but a hopeful vision to topple down the legitimized racial inequality. Transcendentalist of a kind, this novel somehow overlaps Romanticism and Realism. This is evidenced in Uncle Tom's prospect of an ideal nation by depicting unwavering faith in humanity despite true to life severities suffered by African American slaves in bondage. Stowe, a Northerner abolitionist, wrote this novel in response to the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. She stayed in Ohio, Cincinnati where she met slaves and heard firsthand the accounts of human enslavement's atrocity which impelled her to write the novel. Stowe grew up in a very pious Christian family, that best explains her several references to Bible verses and her optimism despite stark reality in slavery. Years after garnering fame worldwide, and disapprovals from Southerners, she wrote the disambiguation account The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin with annotated bibliography of her sources to establish her stand against slavery in the novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin was first subtitled "The Man that was called a Thing," that verifies the author's indignation against slavery as a system that treats people as properties or worse, as livestock. Stowe's voice and opinion are thoroughly expressed in the novel's narration that consists of hopeful preachy sermons and persuasive soliloquies. As a fellow Transcendentalist, Stowe succeeds in following Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea that God's will shall be followed if own principles are sincerely examined and people acted on them, as portrayed by Uncle Tom. As a sentimental novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin provokes the reader's sympathy, and strong emotions toward larger themes like racial discrimination, oppression to women, incompatibility of Christian beliefs to slavery, and hypocrisy in self-serving cruel state laws against fugitive slaves. Philosophical reasons and logic are not mainly used and highlighted in the novel to traduce slavery, but rather it's the humanitarian appeal towards Uncle Tom's and other slaves' sufferings that touched and convinced people to finally abolish slavery....