Uncle Tom's Cabin, By Harriet Stowe Essay
Tim O’Brien and Harriet Beecher Stowe would agree that there is not much difference between a soldier and a slave. Drafted soldiers fighting in foreign countries in the interests of unknown authorities are the same as slaves toiling in fields for their master’s profits. Of course, there are some soldiers who join out of their own free will, just as there are slaves that choose to stay because they have nowhere else to go. However, for those that don't want to be institutionalized, slaves can escape just as soldiers have the ability to desert - neither option being very pleasant. Pleasantries are not common in either occupation, both consist of “blood and cruelty” that no one has the “nerve to hear” (Stowe) and these tragedies can not be simply
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At both the Shelbys’ and the St. Clares’ the slaves are shown compassion and sympathy, causing both families to contradict the norm in which slaves are treated as lesser beings. Stowe does not offer these settings in order to show slavery’s evil as conditional but instead she seeks to unveil the vices of slavery even in its optimal scenario. While Arthur Shelby and Augustine St. Clare do possess a sense of kindness and intelligence, their ability to tolerate slavery proves them to be hypocritical and morally weak. Even in the presence of a compassionate master however, slaves suffer, nonetheless, as by the actions of the financially struggling Arthur Shelby as he essentially destroys Tom’s family after selling him into to the Haley, the slave trader, as well as when St. Clare’s enormously selfish wife Marie demands and expects attention even after the death of the St. Clare’s daughter Eva, ultimately robbing them of their time to mourn and process the tragedy. A common argument in the defense of slavery claims that the establishment of slavery benefited slaves as most masters acted in their slaves’ best interest, Stowe refutes this argument however insisting that the slave’s best interest was solely dependent on obtaining freedom, which in turn was not the intentions set out by slave
At both the Shelbys’ and the St. Clares’ the slaves are shown compassion and sympathy, causing both families to contradict the norm in which slaves are treated as lesser beings. Stowe does not offer these settings in order to show slavery’s evil as conditional but instead she seeks to unveil the vices of slavery even in its optimal scenario. While Arthur Shelby and Augustine St. Clare do possess a sense of kindness and intelligence, their ability to tolerate slavery proves them to be hypocritical and morally weak. Even in the presence of a compassionate master however, slaves suffer, nonetheless, as by the actions of the financially struggling Arthur Shelby as he essentially destroys Tom’s family after selling him into to the Haley, the slave trader, as well as when St. Clare’s enormously selfish wife Marie demands and expects attention even after the death of the St. Clare’s daughter Eva, ultimately robbing them of their time to mourn and process the tragedy. A common argument in the defense of slavery claims that the establishment of slavery benefited slaves as most masters acted in their slaves’ best interest, Stowe refutes this argument however insisting that the slave’s best interest was solely dependent on obtaining freedom, which in turn was not the intentions set out by slave