Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Uncle Tom's Cabin
What a story." Uncle Tom's Cabin" does not fall on the list of the patterns that we said children s literature possesses. When you look at this story you must look at it in parts to see how it realats to common childrens literture. We said that childrens littiture contain lots of details that gives the reader a picture of what is going on. "Eliza was standing by the window, looking out in another direction, when Sams quick eye.... The trader got a glimpse of her as she diapered down the bank." There was not very deep details given in this portion of the story, but you could see Eliza and feel the flutters of her heart when she saw Sam. During this time period God was present and exalted in books as in this one. This story continued to show God as a being that you should trust and have faith in order to make it through what was an impossible situation. Eliza said "Lord,help!Lord, save me!" and she also would tell people how he (God) has been helping her and giving her strength to continue her journey. Even thought parts of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" went along with our thoughts of childrens literature, when you think of good prevailing seems very absent here. How could anyone see anything good about enslaving people and making them do things that one could do for themselves. I had to again look at this concept in parts to see how it is used in this story. After Eliza and Harry crossed the river a man helped them out, and they received shelter form strangers. When you look at this story as a whole you cant see much good. Once you break it down into parts it shows that no matter how evil people my be, eventually some good people will come along and change things for the better.
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I never thought to look at the amount of details in the book. This is a very interesting perspective! I completely agree witht the religion part, I think its going to be in every singel text we read in the class!!
ReplyDeleteReligion seems to permeate every story we read. Jillian, you point out that by trusting in God these characters are able to make it through seemingly impossible situations. You go on to talk about the good vs. evil dichotomy that we see in early children's literature. Maybe God is the overall "good" in this book, because I agree, there don't seem to be many positives portrayed.
ReplyDeleteI agree that overall the story doesn't portray much good, after all it's about slavery and hunting down people, but I like how you pointed out that if you break the story down into parts it shows some good. There are helpers in this story, just like many of the other stories we've read like The Wide Wide World, that show the good in mankind. This portrayal of good greatly contrasts the evil depicted in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but gives some hope for humanity.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about the religous aspect of the book. It has been a major part of every story we have read so far and I think it will continue to do so in the rest of the stories we read. Religon was such a major part of people's lives back then that it really helped them connect to a story
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