Reader Response

After reading the reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on several different websites I have come to the conclusion that many people believe this to be a great book that everyone should’ve read in high school or college at some point. There were many that felt bad reading this and wished that they could change the way our history was. There were also many that claimed it was a hard read for other reasons like the dialogue, the way Stowe built the characters or all in all they just hated the book.

On the website, Goodreads, the majority of reviews that I read talked about what they would’ve done if they lived during this period of time and how they wished to believe that they would be the ones to stand up and say “no, slavery is wrong.” One quote from someone’s review, “This book lies so heavy on my heart. There is one thing in our country's history that bothers me the most and that is slavery. This book was very hard for me to listen to. I can't wrap my mind around someone treating another person like dogs because of the color of their skin. There were many times that I wanted to smack several people for the things they said. I would like to believe if I had lived during times of slavery I would be one of the people who helped free slaves and stand up for their rights. I don't have time for hatred and it saddens me when people are abused.” This was a topic many people talked about.

I completely agree with this comment because it really upsets me to think that my fellow Americans during this time were completely for buying other human beings just because they had a different color of skin and they felt they were superior to them because of it.

On Barnes and Noble, there were many people talking about how Stowe applied religion to the book. It was mentioned how Tom was Christ-like and how he was a good man because even in his toughest time, he was willing to forgive those who had done him wrong. One comment I read was “I would recommend this book to everyone and anyone because it teaches you the morals of life and that no matter what always keep faith because Tom never lost hope and he found the light in the most dimmest moments because he knew that God was always on his side protecting him.” There was a lot of talk about the morals of characters in the book.

I agree with this websites reviews because I also feel like Uncle Tom was a good Christian man. I am not religious at all but I know enough to notice how Tom was always forgiving and even when he was being beaten to death he was praying for the men. He was a truly selfless man.

Lastly, from Amazon, I found that a lot of these reviews are about the harsh reality behind the content of the book. Some commented on how slavery was a thing, it happened, and now we must all accept it and learn about it and learn from it. There were also statements made about how even though this book was written before the Civil War, there are many aspects in the book that we can learn from today. One reviewer said “This story written so very long ago, so many of the situations and comments were topical and relevant to the current event of the time it was written, and yet this story still has something valuable to say to people living in our modern world.”

I also agree with the findings of this website. I believe that I learned a great deal from this book even though it is written about something I never dealt with and it was written so long ago. It taught me how I can forgive people when they do me wrong because that makes me the better person. It taught me that there were some who justified slavery and what was happening to slaves everyday, including the church at one point because there were “good slaveholders.” This book truly has taught me quite a bit.