God. God. God

A recurring motif I have noticed in the novel is the constant appearance of God and Christ. They are the biggest influence of good the novel portrays. Tom and Eva for instance, are sanctified and their figures are highly influenced and connected to jesus. However, what does this mean? Is Christ as a recurring character a method Stowe had of imposing christianity in her readers, or does God and Christ signify something deeper? 

Christianity states that one should be fair to your fellows, and show them love, equality and respect. It makes me wonder how hypocritical southern racist christians truly were. Eva for us is not a hypocritical Christian, she represents what a true and loyal christian should be. Eva tells Topsy how "Jesus loves all alike? He is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do, – only more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you were white."  With this quote, Stowe glorifies Eva as the ideal christian. She want the readers to comprehend how fraudulent religious slave owners were, and exhibit how one should be. Instead of directly attacking racist religious people, she delicately reveals a pressing critique through  Eva's and Tom's attitudes. Doing otherwise during that time period, such as directly dissing on slavery could have affected her as an author, and possibly caused her more than one problem, even legally. 

Stowe romanticizes the story to protect herself from being attacked during the time. Her critique towards slavery is equally as strong as a direct one, however she deviates her reader from her true message through a happy story on slavery. She hides  the meaning of the story by adding layers of metaphors and amorous characters, and through the use of Christ she pushes her readers to believe in what she thinks. 

The Universal Theme of Madness

Who  has the right to define what is normal and what is not?  Uncle Tom's Cabin as well as many other novels, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest analyze this subject. Eva (Uncle  Tom's Cabin) for instance, to us is seemly the only sane one in the story as she is not racist, but to her society she is rather crazy. On the other hand, Chief Bromden (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) gives the impression that he is mad and therefore is in a medical ward, when in fact he perfectly would conform our society.  

Eva is a young white girl that seems perfectly normal. She lives in the south and her family owns various black slaves, however she is different in the sense that she treats those slaves as equals. Eva gives them care, support and love. For example, she helps Topsy (a rebellious slave) and even says "I love you, because you haven’t had any father, or mother, or friends; – because you’ve been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good." (Pg.321) During that time, slavery in the south was widely approved of. Therefore, when Eva expresses love so explicitly to her slaves, she is considered mad. To her society she is someone with rebellious opinions, but to us she is the one of only sane characters the novel exhibits. In contrast, Chief Bromden from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the same. Here, Chief Bromden is the only sane one in a society of people we perceive as  insane. He has to act like he is deaf and mute in order to conform that society, because what normal would be to us, to them wouldn't be accepted. 

This leads us to believe that for all we know, society has imposed over us the idea of what fits into the range of "normal" and what doesn't. We base our definitions of what is "okay" depending on society. Here we see three different societies: ours, Eva's and Chief Bromden's. Each has a different definition of normal and acceptable, thus society defines what is normal and acceptable. Normal and okay is subjective, we each have our own definition of it, and no one should be able to judge our different definitions on it. 

Racism: A Constant Pattern

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel that explores the idea of anti-slavery and approaches the topic through a touching story about compassionate non-racist white people. This novel was very influential during the civil war, however it doesn't mean it changed what people believed. In the book one finds different characters who are noble and treat african americans as equals. However,  in the movie The Help, (which takes place 80 years later) one also finds characters who treat african americans as equals or as inferiors, questioning america's unchanging society.

The book exhibits how good people existed in the time, but it also reveals the reality behind slavery during its worse point. To connect the movie The Help to this book is a way to demonstrate how good and bad people have always existed. The civil war ended more than twenty years before the events of the movie, however racism is still evident. People in the 1850s such as Mr. Haley who would refer to african americans like "an old rack o' bones,-not worth her salt" which wouldn't even "take her for a present..." (Pg. 135) reveal that sense of superiority white people had. In the movie, simply to fit in with the rest of the community, one of the characters unjustly treats her black maid like trash when usually she wouldn't have done it. The bad treatment towards african americas was was widely supported in the in the 1850s, however some people still didn't do it.  When Mr. Shelby is talking about selling Harry he portrays himself as "a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother" as he "would rather not sell him.." This reveals that good people existed even before the civil war, and that is what the book is trying to demonstrate to its readers. That it is not bad to be good. Both novels, at their times tried to push people into stopping slavery. The fact that two novels exist with eighty years of different exhibit how unchanging racism ideals were. 

This novel, as many others such want to convey to their viewers/readers that it is good to treat african americans like equals and not inferiors. They try to show slavery or segregation as cruel and unfair, by providing contrasting characters that exhibit that equal treatment. I wanted to compare this movie because it reveals how people hadn't changed, even eighty years later. That even though slavery was didn't exist legally  segregation and discrimination were still there. African americans were still emotional slaves for the whites because they felt they still owned them.