Lisa's Reviews > Uncle Tom’s Cabin

"Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!"

I remembered this quote from Uncle Tom's Cabin all of a sudden when I accidentally paraphrased it in a discussion on gun control at school. Some issues can't be solved by half-measures. They have to be abolished.

There are books that shape who you are. I remember when I first read Uncle Tom's Cabin as a young girl. Before that, I had only a vague idea of slavery in America as a historical phase, something I imagined as an evil that was no more. With this novel, I entered the world of rage. Literature has the power to engage where statistics leave you cold, it has the power to make you feel what other people feel, and to see what abstract terms mean in real, everyday life.

Decades later, teaching slave trade and abolitionist movements in Humanities classes, I still felt the anger, the sorrow, the shame. And I realised that literature does that to you - it gives you a social conscience if you are brave enough to compare notes and check your privileges.

The horrors of white supremacy can hardly be better told than in this tale of love and suffering and rage, so shocking to read as a young adult, and yet so necessary. I shudder when I think of our current political climate of hostility and intolerance towards any human beings that are distinctly different from our own tribe. And I feel both rage and sorrow as I know there are far too few adolescents today who are willing to put in the time and effort to read about historical brutality and injustice. I shudder when I think that Anne Frank's diary is considered boring by my students, too slow and lacking "action" (read: violence). Where are we heading if we don't listen to the literary voices of those who experienced past horrors? Where are we headed if we let profit and individual advantage stand above ethical behaviour and compassionate humanity? Where are we headed if we don't think our rights apply to others as well?

Make people desperate, and they won't be afraid to fight. Take away too much and they have nothing to lose, and nothing to fear. When it comes to human rights, there can be no grey zones, there can be no two class system, no discrimination. There can be no exemptions. We are all equally entitled to a life in freedom and dignity. Wherever we do not guarantee that, there will be rage. Beware of the signs in mainstream society:

"The country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next."

Let's not be cheated. Let's look through the pious surface and see the egocentric hypocrites in their entitlement for what they are - instigators of violence. Let's do what is right by humankind rather than what is personally enriching or convenient.

Uncle Tom's Cabin taught me that. And I have been in a reading rage ever since!