Having just completed my reading of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, a few thoughts.

• Literary Quality. The book was interesting enough to keep me reading through all 629 pages, though the narrative did seem to get a bit slow in the middle. Overall, even 150 years later, most of the text was easily parsable.

• Persuasive Effectiveness. Since it was written with the intent of swaying political opinions, this seems like a subject worthy of discussion. However, from my perspective, that's difficult to judge, because I was already convinced beyond a doubt of the evils of slavery long before I laid my hands on it. Obviously, in this day and age, it's hard to imagine anyone in America favoring slavery in its pre-Civil War form. (A few might secretly like the idea, but they wouldn't admit it publicly.) But at the time the book was written?

  Perhaps of greater benefit to the modern reader is the way the text makes it easy to infer the rationalizations used by those who argued for slavery (or the accomodation thereof by "free" states), or tried to downplay its deplorable effects. It wouldn't be in the slave owner's best interest to hurt their slaves too badly or work them to death, because that would deprive them of economic benefit, so it must not happen very often. Or... The slaves are better off where they are, because if they were set free, how would they survive? Etc.

  The book roundly demonstrates the fallacies of such reasoning. (Even though it is admitted fiction, in the final chapter, the author discusses how the book portrays a collage of real incidents that she either witnessed herself, or been informed of by personal acquaintances.)

  (Slightly off-topic, but relevant modern day corollary: The cries of the slavery-supporters of yesteryear sound eerily similar to arguments made by those now who see nothing wrong with corporate omnipotence. "Of course corporations will act in consumers' best interest, because if they didn't make what consumers wanted, people wouldn't buy from them." Uh huh. Just like the slave owners wouldn't beat their slaves to death because it wouldn't be to their theoretical economic advantage.)

• Racial Portrayals. Here's where the book gets a little kooky. I'm not black, and even I found a lot of the author's running commentary condescending and patronizing. "A docile and impressionable race"?!? (Okay, maybe that wasn't actually a direct quote because I don't feel like reading it again to hunt for specific passages, but the whole thing was littered with little generalizations akin to that one.) Maybe she was trying to rouse up sympathy for them, but I found such comments, made with no apparent irony, idiotic and even offensive. Certainly unnecessary. But then again, that is looking at it through a present-day lense.

• Religion Gone Overboard. I want to be clear on exactly what I am referring to with that heading. I did NOT have a problem with the use of Bible texts or comparisons made within the story. Those were both effective and contextually fitting.

  What annoyed me, especially toward the end of the story and in the final remarks, was the way Stowe attempted to suggest, both through implication and direct statement, that the slaves should be freed because then they'd be more likely to convert to Christianity. I'm not certain whether she was just trying to pander to her puritan audience, or whether she herself actually bought into that batch of hooey.

  Is there actually someone out there who's going to think this way? "Nope, I'm not convinced that the cruelty wrought by the slave system is reason enough to abolish it. People being tortured and killed? Mothers being forcefully separated from their infant children? Nope, sorry. I still say slavery is still a good system. What's that, you say? If we abolish slavery, then they'll all become Christians? Well, why didn't you say so before? Let's get rid of slavery right now, and we can bring them all to Jesus!"

  Ok, so maybe there are people who would think like that. Perhaps Stowe was right to include that bit of oddball logic. Whatever it takes to gain support for the most worthy cause, I suppose. The ends justify the means.

  Let's just not forget the hidden cost: Pandering to such narrow biases obscures the truth that inflicting an alien religion on a people forcefully uprooted from their home continent is also a form of spiritual and mental enslavement. Even when slaves become physically free, they may still find their spirit's subject to the "White Man's God"; though physical oppression might be gone, that's a much more difficult form of bondage to break. This book does nothing to address that; instead, it legitimizes it.

• Uncle Tom. (SPOILER alert.) Of course, I've heard the term Uncle Tom used in conversations as an insult. This had me wondering, for at least the first half of the book, how long it was going to take for Uncle Tom to somehow betray one of the escaping slaves, or do something equally dastardly in the name of loyalty to one of his masters. In order to have one's name become an insult to future generations, he must have done something really nasty, right?

  So I was quite surprised at how he turned out. He was, undoubtedly, the hero of the story. The author was not pulling our leg or working toward a surprise twist when she stated this outright in the beginning chapters. So how did the devoted Tom, who was still principled enough to refuse to obey an order of inflicting cruelty on others, get such a bad rep? On the surface at least, he doesn't seem much different than Jesus when he allowed himself to be crucified. Why the difference?

  Let's comes back to Stowe's target audience. Clearly, this book was not meant as an address to slaves or black people. It was aimed at whites. They would read it and see Tom as a self-sacrificing martyr; in order to cement this sympathy, he had to never appear threatening in any capacity. He was subservient to the end, he didn't make a stink even when cheated repeatedly, and went so far as to convince other slaves not to kill their tyrannical master.

  This would effectively play on whites' emotions to make them believe that Tom was deserving of freedom, It would also engender the notion that this is how black people ideally behave.

  But if you read it from the slave's perspective (not the intended audience), and Tom is held up as a role model, the message becomes one of defeatism. Stay in your place, do what you're told (unless it means doing something really awful to someone else), and never demand your rights. Then, if you're lucky, well.... even then, you may just end up dying, but at least you'll be held up as a virtous person. Oh, and you'll also go to Heaven. (See previous point about religion.)

Clearly, the book is not without its caveats. Despite these qualms, it is riveting, and laudable for the influence it had at the time. I can't fault Stowe's motives. Still, I have to wonder how much was written from her own subconscious bias, and how much was knowingly calculated sophistry to hit her audience where it mattered.