A novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is thought to be the best example of anti-slavery literature throughout the centuries. The author proved her ability to grasp and share the dreadful and difficult reality which was called slavery and which many had to live with and fight with every single day. The book was published during the critical time — at the dawn of the Civil War. The novel contained a message of humanism and Christian love and how they can help everyone to overcome the most hopeless and dreadful times. The book was forbidden in the Southern states and Harriet Beecher Stowe was criticized and even humiliated by being called sinner and no longer a lady. Keith Carabine emphasizes that “she was accused, as Thomas Gossett thoroughly documents, of traducing the essentially beneficent, paternal institution of slavery for all the usual reasons: she failed to understand that blacks were inferior to whites and that the Bible justified and the American constitution supported slavery; that on the rare occasions families were split it was usually due to ‘the evil conduct of the slaves themselves’; that whipping was unfortunately (and occasionally) necessary to ensure order; and that the housed and well-fed slaves, as part of the plantation, were essentially better off than the ‘wage-slaves’ in Northern factories.’” (Carabine, p.10) All those reasons mentioned by the supporters of slavery could not ever justify the inhumanity of treating people like a product or the machine. Joan Hedrick who is Professor of Trinity College Washington DC shares her views on what provoked Harriet Beecher Stowe to write such an influential work: “She could not have written the book if she had not live here, in Cincinnati, the supporter state, where she understood the way in which the controversy was suppressing the free speech, for one thing…” (C-Spanvideo.org.) Harriet Beecher Stowe was the one of the first not only to admit that slavery is unnatural for humans and must die out, but also “many historians regard her novel as a significant force in leading to the Civil War which ended in the defeat of confederate States of America and the abolition of slavery in the USA.” (Anti-SlaverySociety.com)
The novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe radiates the variety of the literary devices used in order to attract the attention to different issues which were very important for understanding of the main message of the novel —the slavery had to be abolished. As it is quoted in Keith Carabine’s introduction “the narrative of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a violate compendium of many different forms — sermon, jeremiad, hagiography, dramatic debate, sentimental tableau, melodrama and allegory: and the omniscient narrator combines the roles of an evangelical preacher, indignant Old Testament prophet, fond sentimentalist, biting satirist, shrewd, realistic observer and analyst of the customs and mores of three different slave regions of the South and orchestrator of a chorus of voices, ranging from the vernacular of the blacks, slave-dealers, Kentuckians and Quakers to the sentimental discourse of Eva …