The Slave Era

Probably the best-known abolitionist novel is Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a work much parodied because of its overly dramatic structure known primarily from a play version. Interestingly, the main character in the book has come to be seen as a detrimental stereotype so that to be an "Uncle Tom" is now a derogatory term, though Stowe meant for the character to represent the best she saw in black people. Stowe was a white woman and social revolutionary committed to the abolitionist cause, and this novel created great controversy when first published, supposedly even contributing to the onset of the Civil War.

The novel thus takes place before the Civil War in an era when slavery was being questioned by some in the North but was accepted in the South as a necessary institution. The Shelby plantation is run by a more kindly man than many slaveowners, but this fact does not protect his slaves when he is faced with financial problems and has to sell Uncle Tom and Harry. This will separate harry from his mother, Eliza, but the owner feels he has no choice. He also seems to have little choice in the market he chooses, since Haley is a part

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hat is right and what is wrong. He has always known intuitively what is right and what is wrong, but he is being exposed to greater and greater examples of what is wrong. The criminality and mean-spiritedness of the Duke an the Dauphin causes Huck to use his wiles to escape from them. The experience also leads to his assessment of slavery and his determination to set Jim free. Huck believes he will go to hell for making this decision, but his humanity is stronger than his notion of social pressures or even of the sort of sin embodied in books. For Huck, doing what is right is a decision made in the heart and not by the law or the bible or any such entity. Even when he is most afraid of the consequences, Huck is true to himself and his human feelings. The education of Huck Finn that occurs in the course of the novel is not traditional education but is rather exposure to the reality of the world and to the nature of the human beings who inhabit it. The more traditional education is what the Widow Douglas wanted for him: I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1724
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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