UNCLE TOMS CABIN

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UNCLE TOMS CABIN

• Harriet Beecher Stowe

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FIRSTS

• Jim Crow in text
• Humor based on black characters instead of white
• Southern novel written in North
• Fictional account of slaves lives in novel form
• Popular novel to sell over 1 million
• Great American Novel (so-called by John William
  DeForest in 1868)

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DOUBLES

• Tom, the slave Tom, the slave trader
• George, the slave George, the plantation owners
  son
• Eva, little white girl Topsy, little black girl
• St. Claire, good master Simon Legree, bad
  master

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ELEMENTS

• memorable characters
• exciting story
• great pathos
• great humor
• depiction of customs
• depiction of regions
• visionary, prophetic mode
• inflammatory political issue

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STEREOTYPES

• Good Southern plantation owners, wives
• Evil Southern plantation owners, wives
• Slaves as simple, gentle, docile
• Children as precocious
• Business men as greedy
• Organized religion as hypocritical
• Blacks belonging in Africa

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THEMES

• God of love
• Christian behavior
• Breakup of families
• Separation of mothers from children
• Evil of American capitalism
• Rule of Law
• Complacence of good folk, northern and southern

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