千字读后感

ABSTRACT

No matter in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or in the Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there is always a faithful person. Uncle Tom was a sacrifice of slavery. However, he was a supreme model of human spirit. With his Christian love, he comforted numerous people who were suffering poverty and misery. Uncle Tom ’s spirit of selflessness, purity and nobility purify our soul. Nowadays, people always remember the honest and loyal Uncle Tom who makes every effort to protect his master.

KEY WORDS: Uncle Tom, honest, loyal, resist

1. Introduction

Tom is a saintly and faithful black slave owned by the Shelby family. When the Shelbys find themselves in financial difficulties, tom is sold to the south. On his way to the south he saves a white girl Eva with the result that her father buys him out of gratitude. After Eva dies of illness and her father is killed in an accident, Tom is sold to a cruel Yankee. Because tom will not reveal the whereabouts of two runaway female slaves, he is whipped to death by his master.

2. Un cle Tom’s Honesty

Though some critics criticized Uncle Tom’s cowardice of sitting down under whatever might come, they could not deny his extraordinary honesty.

At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Shelby, the first and most generous master of Uncle Tom, re commended Uncle Tom’s honesty when discussing with his creditor, Haley, to whom he owed a lot sum of money that could not be paid off easily. Though Mr. Shelby was reluctant, he resorted to sell Tom to clear the debt, and he believed that Uncle Tom was absolutely worth the amount. Mr. Shelby said that Uncle Tom was his favorite pet and a “genuine article”, a pious, steady, sensible, uncommon fellow. He trusted him without question and let him come and go around the country freely, managing his money, house, and horse. Everything he had, he would ask Uncle Tom to deal with them, and many years’ success and fruits found Uncle Tom true and square in everything, and his honesty won the highest place in front of Mr. Shelby.

3. During Mr. Shelby’s talking with Haley, there is one thing that could testify Tom’s honesty to the utmost. It was one fall, Mr. Shelby asked Tom to go to Cincinnati alone, to do business for him, and bring home five hundred dollars. “‘Tom’,” Mr. Shelby said to him, ‘I trust you because I think you are a Christian —I know you wouldn’t cheat’” (Stowe 1999: 2). Surely, Tom came back, with that sum of money, and some fellow said to him, “Tom, why don’t you make tracks for Canada?”, but Tom answered them “Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn’t” (Stowe 1999: 2). It was because of such a real thing of Uncle Tom that Mr. Shelby demanded

to let him cover the whole balance of the debt.

4. Uncle Tom’s honesty, not only made him the most important Negro before Master Shelby,

but also before his new master, St. Clare, after he was sold to him. St. Clare was indolent and careless of money. Hitherto all the providing and marketing had been principally done by Adolph, the slave supervisor who was to the full, as careless and extravagant as his master. Both of St. Clare and Adolph had carried on the dispersing process with great alacrity. However, Uncle Tom had been accustomed for many years to regard his master’s property as his own. Thus when he saw, with an uneasiness he could scarcely repress, the wasteful expenditure of the establishment, he would sometimes make his suggestions in the quiet, indirect way which his class often acquired. At first, St. Clare adopted his suggestions occasionally. Later, being stuck with his soundness of mind and good business capacity and morality, he confided in him more and more, till gradually all the marketing and providing for the family were entrusted to him. Uncle Tom, trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a bill without looking at it, and pocketed him the charge without counting it, had every facility and temptation to dishonesty, but a nature of impregnable honesty, strengthened by Christian faith, kept him from it.

5. From Mr. Shelby to St. Clare, though tempted by freedom and money, Uncle Tom stuck to his

principles all the time. He testified his integral character by his own honesty and won others’ trust.

6.

7. Uncle Tom’s Loyalty

8. Similar to his honesty, Uncle Tom’s loyalty was mainly reflected through Master Shelby and

Master St. Clare.

9. 1.2.1 His loyalty to Mr. Shelby

10. When reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one could not forget how mindfully Uncle Tom protected

his master when the master decided to sell him to South. “You have heard what she said! If I must be sold, or all the people on the place and everything go to rack, why, let me be sold” (Stowe 1999:38). Uncle Tom understood that had his master had any other expediency, he would not sell his favorite Tom. As a master, his liability was more to save other slaves in his house than to protect him, but Uncle Tom had never complained or blamed. However, as a slave, Uncle Tom had already earned Mr. Shelby the money all he got for him, and even twice more; and Mr. Shelby ought to let him go two years ago, and should have given him the passport and guaranteed to return freedom to him. Now, though he couldn’t help himself, he meant to sell him. On the other part, Uncle Tom, loyal as he was, not only refused Eliza’s suggestion to escape, but also determined to stay and help his master and other Negroes on the place. “Master always found me on the spot, —he always will. I never have broken trust, nor used my pass no ways contrary to my word, and I never will. It’s better for me alone to go, than to break up the place and sell all. Master is not to blame” (Stowe 1999: 38). That was the poor Uncle Tom’s choice, great Uncle Tom’s choice. Even when he was sold to other masters later, he never forgot his ex-master, especially his little master George Shelby, who taught him reading and writing, and whose penny he always kept under the liner no matter where he went, dreaming that one day his young master would bring him back home. For Uncle Tom, he who teaches him one day is his teacher for life, he will always be loyal to his master

11. 4.1 Comparison Between George Harris and Uncle Tom

12. As the novel ended, Uncle Tom died. His death was the consequence of slavery in that society.

But there was also an opposite ending of American slavery; it was George Harris, another slave depicted by Harriet Beecher Stow in the novel; he was in everything the opposite image of Uncle Tom. Both being slaves, Uncle Tom and George Harris were representatives of two entirely different types of slaves. For one type of Uncle Tom, endurance was his best trick against adversities; and for the other type of George Harris, in order to protect his family and obtain freedom, he would struggle to the last minute of his life. Someone said that it was their distinctive characters that resulted in their opposite endings, and here, the thesis will analyze both of their characteristics, to show why they had different fates, and why Uncle Tom was bound to be a tragedy.

13. 4.1.2 Uncle Tom’s sacrifice for freedom

14. Believing in nothing but he himself, the brave, disobedient, struggling George Harris won a

new life for his family. However, Uncle Tom, sticking his faith in God, and reconciling himself to God’s arrangements, was bound to be a sacrifice in that society in which God was helpless and deafen by the American whites.

15. George Harris succeeded in reaching Canada, and Uncle Tom failed; though people admired

George Harris’ bravery of struggle, they admired Uncle Tom’s spirit of sacrifice, too, for he dared to maintain his faith in that deaf God. In Uncle Tom’s heart, God was never deaf, but always be there, watching him, loving him, helping him and would help him sometime. When Uncle Tom was going to be sold by Mr. Shelby, he smothered his grief and comforted his wife with his brave, manly heart: “I’m in the Lord’s hands, nothing can go further than he lets it; —and that’s one thing I can thank him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and not you nor the children. Here you are safe; —what comes will only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me, —I know he will” (Stowe 1999:92). Later, when Master St. Clare had guaranteed his freedo m but died, and being informed to be sold again, the old Uncle Tom’s heart was full. The hope of liberty, the thought of distant wife and children, rose up before his patient soul, as to the mariner shipwrecked almost in port rose the vision of the church-spire and loving roofs of his native village. However, he drew his arms tightly over his bosom, and choked back the bitter tears, and tried to pray, and the only pray he prayed was: “The Lord’s will be done” (Stowe 1999:317). What’s more, when Uncle Tom was whipped by Léger, lying there, almost died, he didn’t have the feeling of coldness, degradation, disappointment, and wretchedness, but a joy of soul-crisis being past. From his deepest soul, the hours that loosed and parted from every hope in the life now were over, and offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to the infinite. When the body was exhausted, there was nothing more that could torture him; for his soul, nothing could torture it, for it belonged to the God, and finally went back to Him.

16. In the eyes of others, Uncle Tom died and failed; but in the heart of Uncle Tom, he died and

won. Eventually he went to the eternal world, laying down all earthly miseries and pain; like Jesus Christ, though he couldn’t save, he tried to save the humanity, and was willing to die for them. Such spirit of sacrifice was remembered and honored by people later. Though Uncle Tom didn’t emancipate slaves, he made a great contribution to it.

Conclusion

As martin Luther king ’s speech “I have a dream ” is still haunting by the ear, the desire of

freedom and equal respect of black people gets stronger and stronger.