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Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
J.P. Jewett, 1852
 Editor recommended age 13 and up.

Summary

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written as a description of slavery in America.  Though categorized as fiction, Stowe was an abolitionist who used real-life vignettes to portray the complex lives of slave owners, slave traders and the slaves themselves.


Language

  • No cursing.
  • Offensive references to African Americans include: "n*gger", "colored", "n*gga", and "dog". 

Sexual Situations

  • There are subtle references to slave owners having sexual encounters with female slaves.
  • There are descriptions of slave owners selecting female slaves based upon their looks.

Violence

  • Slaves are frequently beaten, whipped, flogged, kicked and punched by slave owners or other supervising slaves.
  • Slave owners offer "dead or alive" bounties on escaped slaves.
  • One of the main characters eventually dies from his master's whippings and beatings.
  • A slave mother murders her two-week-old son by overdosing him with laudanum because she feels this is better than seeing him taken from her and sold.
  • Several characters contemplate suicide.

Drugs/Alcohol

  • There are several references to the consumption of alcohol.
  • Slaves steal alcohol in order to "make things easier."
  • A slave mother uses laudanum to kill her infant.

Race Issues

  • Overt racism is clear throughout the story.
  • There are many references to the belief in the superiority of the white race.

Religion

  • Some slave owners encourage Christianity among their slaves while others forbid it.
  • Christianity and the Bible are invoked by people on both sides of the slavery argument.
  • There is extensive description of evangelism involving Christian slaves "spreading religion to save souls."
  • There are occasional references to witchcraft and "haunting ghosts".
  • Several characters describe themselves as atheists.
  • There is a discussion about the devil and hell in which hell is described as where "cruel" slave owners go after death.

Politics

  • The story includes a description of the legal system of the Southern states in which the testimony of "colored blood" is not useful.
  • The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 is used by the author as a backdrop to describe the tension between the free states and the slave states.  It is also used to show the effects of slavery on slave families as they were often split up, sold and dispersed.

 

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