The Book Report of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
No.201141010337 Name：霍涵“So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Lincoln said when he met Stowe at the beginning of the Civil War. Uncle Tom's Cabin，or Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It greatly influenced many people's thoughts about African Americans and slavery in the United States. It also strengthened the conflict between the Northern and Southern United States.
In fact I've finished the novel in the end of last year and it left a really deep impression on me. The initial feeling I had was written on my Qzone. And now I also want to express some of my feelings.
As we all can see that Uncle Tom's Cabin was an anti-slavery novel and it was even considered as one factor that caused the Civil War.There are several impressive characters in this novel, George who is clever and brave；Harry, a beautiful and talented child who sings dances and mimes；Mrs. Shelby, a very religious woman；Sambo and Qimbo and so on. The major character Uncle Tom who was the most impressive in this novel was a devout Christian. He endured the miserable fate bravely and aroused the white's sympathy for slaves with his Christ's sacrifice and the tolerance of returning good for evil. This novel focuses on the distinctive personalities of Uncle Tom deeply influenced by Christianity and the important role Uncle Tom's Cabin playing on abolition; and the Significance of “Uncle Tom” to the harmonious world's development, and the effect on modern people. In the novel, the slaves were sold from one place to another frequently, and their fate was tragic, with no exception, just like Uncle Tom, no matter he was under the control of kind masters or evil masters, he can't escape the misfortune of being sold from one master to another. We can't see any human right of them, so terrible. As someone said, with more people realizing the inhumanity of slavery in the 19th century, slavery became one of the most important issues and it became more violent year by year in American society. However, slavery was not abolished irrevocably until ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, following the Civil War. After the passage of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this novel Uncle Tom's Cabin which publicized the evil of slavery to a wide audience. Now we are in the 21st century, we may never come across such kind of thing. However, this book can always remind of us that there ever has existed this evil and we can't let it happen again. And “equality” 、“human right ” can't just be a slogan, we should make it come true really and always.
It is without question that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an overnight success. It sole 350,000 copies during the first year, and since then has been published in some forty languages and has been read by millions of people around the world. The power of the novel unquestionably comes from the investment of the author’s sense of her won suffering and oppression, as well as her determination to be free, in the characters of Tom an d his fellow slave Eliza, the protagonists of the book’s two main plots.
The book has flaws, of course. The quality of the writing is variable, as it is in the works of many greater talents than Stowe. Herman Melville is one of my favorite writers, but I'd be hard-pressed to defend some of his sentences, or even some of his books--on purely literary grounds! There are indeed sentimental passages in "UTC." So what? There are plenty in Hawthorne, Dickens, Ruskin, and the Brontes, too...and lord knows our age has its own garish pieties. There are also a couple (only a couple!) of unfortunate remarks on the "childlike" character of slaves, but nothing so offensive as to render suspect Stowe's passionate belief that blacks are equal to whites in the eyes of God and must not be enslaved. (She also says that differences between blacks and whites do not result from a difference in innate ability, and argues that a white person raised to be a slave would show all the characteristics of one). By contrast, Plato wrote reams in defense of slavery and racialism, and yet people who point this out are considered spoilsports, if not philistines.
“Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory.” Have not many of us，in the weary way of life，felt，in some hours how far easier it were to die than to live？The martyr，when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement，a thrill and fervor，which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest. But to live，—to wear on，day after day，of mean，bitter，low，harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed，every power of feeling gradually smothered，—this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow，daily bleeding away of the inward life，drop by drop，hour after hour，—this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.
I’m very keen on these words. Maybe we can get a lot from it: Slavery is an evil institution; Faith in God sustains and ennobles the oppressed; True courage does not require violence; The human soul is neither black nor white; No human being has the right to deprive another human being of freedom. But what we can do maybe just is value what we value and love what we love!
References:
1.Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2.《一生必看的48部经典英文名著》，北京外文印象出版社，2005
3.Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Retrieved April 18, 2007.