The Power Of Rhetoric

Since Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the masterpiece of the American novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe) was published in 1851, it has been read widely in the United States for its special way of protest for the misery of those southern slaves. Nowadays, this novel has once again appeared on the reading lists of all English Departments of colleges and universities. The contemporary Americans are enlightened by the unique thought of "Protestantism" of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and determined to reshape their weary and exhausting society. If Uncle Tom’s Cabin ever triggered a war, then it has lighted the fire of "dissent" again in the smokeless ideological battlefield and encouraged people to reconstruct their confidence on the reform of ideas.Uncle Tom’s Cabin has tried to explore the possibility of self-renewal social transform by the rhetorical strategy. Serving as catalyst, guidance and mirror, it has become the prototype of protest literature, providing a new angle for interpreting the contemporary American culture. This paper aims at exploring the rich and effective rhetorical strategies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from such three aspects as empathy, shock value and symbolic action, by which means the implied "Protestantism" could be understood within the sphere of American culture.Specifically, emphasizing on the common human identity of the Black, the rhetoric strategy of empathy is helpful for readers to identify the Black and also inspires today’s "protesters" who have to deal with the new issue of mutual combination of different races and cultures. Moreover, the rhetoric strategy of shock value raises the issue of slavery within the sphere of social values. With comparison between Tom’s true religion and those arrogant White’s blasphemy, it astonished American people at that time. Finally, in order to avoid being monotonous because of clear publicizing purpose, Uncle Tom’s Cabin also tactfully applies the strategy of symbolic action to enable readers to comprehend and perceive through the symbolic characters, as well as the symbolic structure with a dialogue mechanism of internal and external circles.All in all, the above analysis demonstrates that by the power of rhetoric, Uncle Tom’s Cabin intensified the contradiction between the North and South before American Civil War, played the role as catalyst to trigger the war and also becomes an ever-lasting great work of protest literature.