Oh, where to begin with this review! Since this is only my second posting of the year, it's probably too early to declare Uncle Tom's Cabin as one of my top ten of 2011, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the novels to follow will have a difficult time capturing my heart in the same way the characters and story line of this book did. Harriet Beecher Stowe does an excellent job of developing each character by offering lengthy, vivid descriptions prior to delving into much dialogue--so vivid that I felt somewhat queasy when reading the description of Mr. Legree, a slave master whose rank demeanor practically jumps off the page at you. Legree did not so much capture my heart as he did grieve it. On the other hand, characters like Evangeline, Uncle Tom, and the those who played a role in helping some of the characters gain their freedom challenged to me to love with the love of Christ and to consider the eternal ramifications of what I do--or don't do.
Having read this novel on the heels of David Platt's "Radical," I'd have to say the victories and defeats of Uncle Tom's Cabin were made all the more poignant. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to read the author's intermittent moral appeals and final comments at the end of the text at the time of it's original publishing. What was most enthralling was reading in the author's final address that the majority of the characters and situations were only partly fictional. I can see myself wanting to read this once a year--for the enjoyment, the encouragement, and for the reminder that slavery still exists in various parts of the world. Harriet Beecher Stowe told this story in 1852; does she have a contemporary who will tell the story of those currently enslaved?
Favorite Quotes: "O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?"
"This, indeed, was a home,--home,--a word that George had never yet known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in his providence, began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining atheistic doubts, and fierce despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, shall never lose their reward."
"That's you Christians, all over!--you'll get up a society, and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among such a heathen. But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that, they are dirty and disagreeable, and it's too much to care, and so on."
Eva: "Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?" Mother: "O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many such things; but, then, nobody ever thinks of doing them,--you know, Eva, nobody does."
"So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?"
