Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

Harriet Beecher Stowe's book is one that I would classify as important rather than great. It's a powerful condemnation of slavery using the language of Stowe's Christian faith, and her moral outrage at it seeps through nearly every page. This I expected; what I didn't expect was how she developed her characters. While her African American characters are uniformly dignified and good, most of the slaveholders received surprisingly nuanced treatments, with some good (if hypocritical) characters among them and only the infamous Simon Legree really embodying in full the evil and corruption resulting from slavery. Yet for all the positive nature of her depiction of her slave characters Stowe cannot help but reflect the racial attitudes of her time, with descriptions that have not aged well. In this she demonstrates the limits of even antislavery activists in their attitudes towards African Americans, yet this is all of a piece in a work that arguably serves as the most historically significant novel in American history, one that helped galvanize opposition to the institution that was corroding the nation's soul. ( )

Couldn't be bothered.

A noble amateur effort, generally clumsy and all laid on with a trowel. But a pat on the head for all those who finish this noble, important, book. ( )

Thanks to their owner's improvidence two Kentucky slaves, a man and a boy, are due to be sold. The boy's mother runs away with him while the man accepts his fate. This is what happened to them.

I found the eye-dialect difficult to get used to but overall the book was a powerful piece of pleading even nearly 170 years later. Obviously I was broadly familiar with the story before going in, but something that took me by surprise was the casual acceptance that, however devastating, the death of one's child was so general an experience that the author could use it as a commonality that would arouse sympathies for the slaves amongst her white readers, though I must admit I did roll my eyes a bit at the sentimentality of the portrayal of Eva. ( )

I was shocked when I saw how bravely Tom stood up to his 'master' and refused to obey the order to whip his fellow slave, knowing that the price would inevitably be a painful death. I see that the sacrifice is now-a-days considered to be giving in, but in that context, under those circumstances, his only choices were obey or dis-obey, non-violently or make life even worse for the others and himself. Given those realities, he acted heroically, not as we currently use the phrase 'an Uncle Tom.' ( )

Absolute trite garbage. One of the worst reading experiences I have experienced. This is religious sentimentality in its worst basest most soap-opera form. Pompous and self-aggrandizing. I would NOT recommend it to anyone unless you have to read it for your studies as a mandatory text. ( )