·
One
book that can make you laugh,
·
One
book that can make you cry,
·
One
book that can invoke feelings,
·
And
yet make you ponder - why,
·
While
spreading the message of equality,
·
It
can challenge your anti-racist mentality,
·
One
book that can bring about a drastic change,
·
In
the hearts of men who detest a darker color range,
·
One
book which preaches ant-racism,
·
And
disperses knowledge like a prism,
·
Written
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American,
·
It
is Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
And in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom,
the protagonist, happens to be my favourite character. He is a robust black
slave who is sold by his kind master Shelby to slave-trader Haley, and then to
a kind prosperous St. Claire family before being bought by Simon Legree, a
cruel plantation-owner.
Throughout the novel, Uncle Tom’s idealistic
character emotionally appeals to the reader. He is described by Frederick
Douglass as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the
embattled hosts of slavery".
Uncle
Tom is indeed an insignia of optimism. His faith in God is intense and unrivalled.
From learning to read the Bible to writing letters to his kin, he consistently endeavors
to improve himself. He also hopes for freedom someday, and thus says to his master
St. Clair, “I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have
them mine, than have them the best and somebody else’s.”
The
novel also cites his inherent virtues of goodness, piety,
passiveness and forbearance that are unshaken even when subjected to
unspeakable brutality. In
fact, he not only advises and inspires fellow slaves but is also grudgingly
admired by his enemies.
Towards the close, his cruel master
Simon Legree orders his slaves, Quimbo and Sambo, to beat him to death because he
refuses to betray the whereabouts of two fugitive female slaves. But his
endurance to the beating even tames those embittered slaves, who thereafter
become true Christians. This noble martyr and hero is thus justifiably among my
favorites.