I just finished reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the second time which is very timely, as this year is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Both times I read it to guide a literature discussion group. It is a fantastic and interesting book but one that is very difficult to read due to the brutal and inhumane depictions it portrays. What I find most interesting is the term, “an Uncle Tom” which has come to mean a submissive, push over, black man. The reason I find this interesting is that Uncle Tom has a will of iron.
I recently read a wonderful critical essay on Uncle Tom in my Wordsworth Classic edition by Keith Carabine of Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury. According to Kent, a number of black abolitionists detested Tom’s submissive nature and would have preferred “a hero who would have buried a hoe deep in the master’s skull”. Given the horrific description of Legree it obvious why they would want to put a hoe in his skull. However, if I may be bold enough, I would say they have totally missed the point of the story with Uncle Tom. History also showed us what happened in situations like this with The Nat Turner Rebellion
Tom was anything but a pushover. The point of the story was that Legree try as he might to brutalize Tom, could not break his spirit. Tom never gave up his dignity and nobody could take that away, no matter how they tried. Legree the sadistic master, tried in vane to break Tom but as Tom says to him, “I’ll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time, all my strength; but my soul I won’t give up to mortal man.” This enrages the evil master who discovers that indeed he can kill Tom by degrees, but he can never truly own him. He soul belongs to God alone.
Back to the present. I am wondering why more schools do not read this book which is one of the most popular American books ever written, but then my daughter who spent one year in public school told me it was too controversial. She is right, but why avoid controversy when kids are living the results of this ugly past? She told me that they were not allowed to say the “N” word when they read To Kill a Mockingbird. I understand why but I wonder why the schools were so lack about many other words kids use, the “F” word, or how about the “MF” word? These are less offensive? but I digress. At least they didn’t tried to change the text or re-write the book like they have with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
While Uncle Tom’s Cabin is fiction, it is American history, at its worst of course, but still a critical chapter to fully understand the present. While it may be easier to read fluff which abounds library shelves, or to avoid the painful past, in the end it is better to know what happened, to discuss it and its ramifications. In this way we can learn from mistakes and to move forward armed with knowledge to change the present and the future for the better.
Do the atrocities of history disappear when we pretend they didn’t happen? Isn’t it better to know what really happened, horrible as it may be, or would we rather read revisionist history? Are we unpatriotic when we admit the faults of our wonderful and amazing country? Does it make us less American? Slavery was horrible and the use of the word nigger was, and is horrible but taking it out of our books does not make the past better. The past is what it is, the present is what we can do something to change. I feel that by reading and hashing over these classic, historically accurate, fictional novels we can get a deep understanding of the many facets of the problem of slavery and the Civil War, now more than ever as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War is commemorated. Harriet Beecher Stowe drove her stake into the heart of America and the world for that matter, and was as Abraham Lincoln said, “the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
