On The Inevitability Of Uncle Tom’s Tragedy

Published in1952, Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe has been a masterpiece for the anti-slavery literature. Among all the characters, Uncle Tom is the most soul-striking one. Uncle Tom, a man of kindness, love, loyalty, unselfishness, and generosity, a man almost without any defect in personality, actually end up with tragic death for the brutality of the slave owner. Therefore, the death of Tom has conveyed a strong tragic atmosphere throughout the novel which assists Mrs. Stowe in exposing the brutal essence of slavery in the south to the maximum, and successfully stirring up people’s compassion to the slaves as well as hatred to the slavery system, and consequently pushing the anti-slavery movements to a climax.However since its publication, the novel has been the target of a surging group of critics while enjoying the great fame. Some critics doubted the reliability of the novel; some disqualified the craftsmanship of Mrs. Stowe as a writer by denouncing its sentimentalism and domesticity, others accused her of depicting Uncle Tom as a servile and submissive slave to the whites, just to name a few. Then there would be a question for us, for we can’t help wondering why it could be such a sweeping success since there are so many attacks on it, why it could exert profound influence while large amounts of anti-slavery works, news reports and pamphlets at contemporary time failed? Yet, few critics have touched upon this question.So it is easy for people to neglect one important reason of its success that is because Mrs. Stowe had told us a good story-the stirring tragedy of Uncle Tom, for tragedy, hailed as the highest form of art, can inspire the maximum pleasure which may consist of a combination of complex emotions, such as encouragement, excitement, horror, sympathies and uplifting feeling from the human body. Besides this, even fewer researches have been made to apprehend the theme of the novel through looking deeper into the inevitability of Uncle Tom’s tragedy.This dissertation aims to analyze the inevitability of Uncle Tom’s tragedy from the perspectives of social background, history, and the characteristics of Uncle Tom himself, for a purpose of comprehensive understanding of the novel’s theme-the evil of slavery.