英文读书报告My Impression about Uncle Tom’s Cabin.doc

My Impression about Uncle Toms CabinFrom the book Uncle Toms Cabin, I was surprised at the various kinds of relationships between whites and blacks of the South. We learn that not all whites were bad and not all blacks were good, but that there were quite a mixture of characters and relationships. That was an emphasis of the book. Its not a melodrama, but shows an evil institution which allows both good and evil and all those in between to exist under it, and how this institution affects the individuals.I found Stowes main purpose of this book was to nakedly expose the institution of slavery to America and the rest of the world with the hopes that something would be done about it. To achieve this purpose, she showed us individual instances of slavery in a country that prided itself on its Christianity and its laws protecting freedom. She showed us how absurd slavery is beneath the shadow of American laws and the shadow of the cross of Christ. Christianity played a very important role in Harriet Beecher Stowes writing which inevitably influenced greatly the portraiture of characters in Uncle Toms Cabin and also Mrs. Stowes own solution to slavery.In fact, all the characters in Uncle Toms Cabin can be put into four categories: perfect Christians, imperfect Christians, half-Christians and non-Christians. Tom and Eva are those rare real Christians or perfect Christians who really live up to the principles of the Bible. Imperfect Christians include those like Mrs. Shelby and Miss Ophelia etc. They believe in God, but their selfishness or hypocrisy prevents them from being good Christians. There are also some half-Christians or going-to-be Christians, such as St. Clare and George Harris. St. Clare is always skeptical towards religion and doesnt believe God until his daughters and his own deaths. Harris is another example. He is rebellious at first, but when his family reunion comes to a reality, he becomes more content and comes nearer to God. While Simon Legree is a typical example of non-Christian whose tough nature refuses to be touched by any good word. He doesnt repent even at his last minute. This kind of categorizing might be oversimplifying. Yet, this is a pattern in Uncle Toms Cabin. So in this sense, Uncle Toms Cabin is a book soaked with spirit of Christianity.In the book , we can find two typical pure souls: Tom and Eva. Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degrees threatening and flogging, he doesnt give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage.Toms another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that its almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, “Father, forgive them, or they know not what they do. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legrees two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, “I forgive ye, with all my soul!” Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, yet, not my will but yours be done. Tom says similar words, The Lords will be done! when he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses. He only obeys what he believes right.One of the most memorable characters was, of course, Eva. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful, always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best to live as they do at her uncles up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because “it makes so many more people round you to love” The reason she asks her Papa to buy Tom is “to make him happy”. When she hears the story of Prue, she doesnt want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible story “sink(s) into her heart”. In her eyes, there are many puzzling things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy. What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just as her name “Evangeline” suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She shares the Gospel with all her fathers plantation slaves as well as questioning her own fathers faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which “dramatize the fact that she does not belong to the world. Stowe gave her a true, simple, childs voice which spoke unadulterated truth about the relations and happenings around her. The character Eva seemed to be an innocent child telling her family and the world about how she saw slavery which exposed a lot of its evils. But when she turned into a mini Jesus and preached to the slaves before her death as Jesus had preached the disciples before his death, I felt the author had given to too great of a jump into maturity to be believable, unless the short life of Eva was really supposed to be a unreal miracle occurrence. Eva was powerful enough as a real character who looks at slavery from innocent eyes. Her transfiguration into a holy person at the end took some of her punch away. Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a