03/16/04   Uncle Tom's Cabin. A Book Review.

I just finished reading the novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Well, let me stop lying. I actually listened to the book on tape of the novel. But it was still long as hell. I had to listen to 14 tapes to hear the whole unabridged version of the book. I could only imagine how thick the book must look like. Since I have to drive at least once a month long distance to see my children during the nine months that I don't have them, I go to the library and get books on tape that would have taken me years to get around to reading in my spare time. So every time I take a road trip, I bring some books with me to listen to. The last book that I completed was Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Like most ignorant Negroes of my generation, when I wanted to label another black person whom I thought had "sold out" somehow to the white man, I could call him an "Uncle Tom". I always heard this term used throughout the black community and like most of the ignorant Negro sheep, I used the term also, even though I have never even gone near the book itself and I had absolutely no real idea of what the book was even about....An "Uncle Tom" is generally thought to have been a slave who kissed the Massa's ass. Beyond that, I didn't have a clue what the story was really about. So since I know most of you will never read the book but yet still call people an "Uncle Tom", I am going to give you a short breakdown of what the book was about and the meaning of the story in my eyes. Keep in mind, this book was hella long so I won't be giving you a very short breakdown of the story...So here it goes....

Tom was a slave who belonged to the Shelby family on a plantation in Kentucky. It seems that the slaves in Kentucky had it a lot easier than the slaves had it down in places like Louisiana because the weather is cooler in Kentucky and there aren't short harvesting seasons that calls for a slave being worked to death like in Louisiana. One of the WORST punishments that you could give a Kentucky slave is to sell him or her "down river". Or down to the slave trading capital of the south, New Orleans, where you would be worked to death under the whip of an evil Massa or overseer until you died either of heat exhaustion or of some kind of disease like Cholera or Yellow Fever.

Tom had a wife whose name I can't recall right now and he had some children. Tom was the #1 slave on the plantation since Mr. Shelby trusted him explicitly. He would let Tom handle most of the paperwork and the general runnings of the plantation. He even could trust Tom to go up to Cincinnatti and trade some horses for him and Tom would come back to Mr. Shelby with the money...Remember that Cincinatti is in OHIO and Ohio is a free state. So Tom could have gone free with Mr. Shelby's horses AND his money and fled to Canada if he wanted to. But since Tom had found religion, he was the most valued and trusted slave and was a close "friend" to Mr. Shelby.

But Mr. Shelby messed up businesswise. He had gotten into some financial trouble due to some bad business investments and he was left in debt. So the story starts with Mr. Shelby and the slave trader, "Halle" discussing business in the parlor....Mr. Shelby knows that Halle has him by the balls and that he is desperate to sell some slaves to make good on his debt...So Halle convinces Mr. Shelby to sell both Tom, his most valued slave and the small male child of a Quadroon (1/4 negro) slave. The Quadroon overheard that her boy was to be sold so she planned to run away to Canada. She confides in Tom that he should run away also but Tom refuses to run away...why?

Tom figures that he would rather have himself sold than have his wife and children sold off to repay the debt...And after the Quadroon slave named Eliza started off to Canada via Ohio, the slave trader made Mr. Shelby sign a bond where all of his property would be taken if Tom ran off while the slave trader Halle went to Ohio to try to catch the quadroon woman and her son that he wanted to buy....Good old Tom didn't run off and after Halle came back from Ohio without the woman, Tom was there to get on the boat to be sold "down river" in Louisiana...Eliza was able to make it to Canada but she went through some shit to get there though...But she had to save her little boy.

While Tom was on the boat, he gained the trust of Halle and Halle took off the leg chains and let Tom walk freely around the boat. Tom helped the crew with things and became a well liked negro on the boat. Then Tom befriended this little white girl....He learned all kinds of tricks to get the girls attention and he would make whistles out of wood and use coin tricks and all kinds of goofy jokes and mimics to get the girl to laugh...Eventually, he was able to get the little white girl to talk to him and they made fast friends..She was an absent minded little girl however so somehow, her dumb ass fell overboard into the river and Tom just happened to be on the deck below where he saw her fall in...The little girl's father was about to jump in the river but they held him back because they saw someone more capable in the water....You guessed it, it was good ole Tom who jumped in the river to save this little fair haired white girl from drowning...He used his big strong chest to keep himself above water until he grabbed hold of the girl and then delivered the girl to the outstretched hands of all of the waiting white folks......GOOD OLE TOM SAVES THE DAY!

Because of that heroic feat, the slave trader Halle was able to sell Tom to the little girl's father, Mr. Lasalle right off the boat! So Tom was spared being greased up and sold down in New Orleans to someone who would work him to death....Mr. Lasalle was a "good massa" and was easy with his slaves...His wife, however, was a true bitch and she had no love for the blacks. The only thing between her wrath and the slaves was Mr. Lasalle.  He didn't beat any of them and they were "spoiled" slaves. Tom didn't have to do any work. All he had to do was wear fine clothes and do whatever the little white girl required of him....I think this is where the ole Shirley Temple movies where she was tap dancing with the black man came about. I think it came from Old Uncle Tom's devoted relationship to the little fair haired white girl with curly blonde locks. I'm serious.....Ahhhh the good life of Uncle Tom.

But as you know, all good things must come to an end. The little white girl named "Eva" had so much goodness inside of her young little blonde curly locked body that she wasn't meant to be on this earth very long. She was loved by the slaves because she was gentle with them and she always wanted to be a "Good Christian". She didn't like any kind of suffering by the slaves and she wanted the slaves to go free..But since she was just a little girl, nobody cared....Tom loved this little white girl like she was his own daughter. She had some kind of blood disease that caused her to deteriorate slowly..When she was on her deathbed, she had her mother cut off some locks of her hair so that she could give them to her close loved ones. Of course Tom got a lock of hair for himself.....I won't go into detail about the little black girl named "Topsy" because her story too complex but let's just say that she was a wild unruly girl until she made friends with Eva who treated her like a good Christian girl should.

While Mr. Lasalle grieved about his daughter's death, Tom ministered to him and did all that he could to try to convert Mr. Lasalle into a Christian....Eventually Mr. Lasalle decided that he was going to give ole Tom his freedom and when he told Tom, the white man was kind of hurt that Tom would be so happy and ready to leave...He asked Tom if he agreed that he was treated very well and wore fine clothes and ate well and Tom said that he was greatful to have such a good Massa and fine clothes. But he'd rather wear poor clothes and live in a raggedy house and have his freedom with his wife and kids....However, Tom said that he would stay with Mr. Lasalle until he converted into a Christian.....That's craziness. I would have had him sign those papers and put me on the first thing smokin to "ole kentuck"..But he didn't do that...Topsy was able to get her freedom because Mr. Lasalle's sister, who was staying with him, had him sign the papers immediately in case that he died and couldn't fulfill his promise...Well Mr. Lasalle was in a bar trying to break up a fight and he got stabbed and he died.

So that left Tom on the block to be sold again....MRS Lasalle didn't know how to run the plantation like her husband did because she was a weak minded sickly woman with no common sense. You'll have to read the book to get the detail of what I'm talking about....

Tom ends up being sold to an uncouth redneck from Louisiana. He takes off the fine clothes that Tom had and auctioned all of his stuff off while Tom looked on. He told Tom that "You're MY Nigger now" and that he better get with the program. He gave Tom some raggedy clothes and put him to work on a crappy ass plantation where the slaves were wretches who barely ate and were worked to death. Legree believed that it was cheaper to work a slave to death and then buy a new one rather than spend money on healthcare for the slaves. He didn't feed the slaves worth a damn and all they could do was grind some corn late at night after they had worked in the fields. But since there weren't enough places to grind your corn, the stronger slaves pushed aside the weak slaves and grinded their corn first leaving the weaker slaves to be up all night waiting to eat. Tom would make sure to grind the corn of the weaker folks BEFORE he ground his own corn. Folks thought he was crazy to do that. But he was noticed by the two overseers, "Sambo" and "Quimbo" who didn't like him from the beginning. This is because Legree planned to promote Tom to a Driver and that's what he bought Tom for...

When the slaves were picking cotton in the fields, some of the older women weren't able to keep up with their quota of cotton in their sack. So Tom would take cotton out of his own sack and put in the weaker slaves sacks on risk of coming up short himself or having the boss see him and punishing him. ..The Boss did see it however but he didn't want to punish him too hard during the peak of the harvesting season because he needed all hands working. But he needed to show Tom who was boss.

While the slaves were in the room weighing their cotton, Legree had gotten angry with one of the weak female slaves who wasn't pulling her weight. Legree told Tom to take the girl out and whip her and Tom said "Oh No Massa..I can't do that"...Legree threatened him with violence and whipped him a few strokes but Tom refused to do it. He told Legree that he would work until he died for him but he didn't care of Legree killed him. There was no way he was going to whip a fellow slave.

And you know that Legree can't let a slave get away with refusing to do what Massa says in front of all of the other slaves. So he had him beaten to within an inch of his life. As Tom recovered in the barn, an old Slave named "Cassie" came to take care of him and give him some water....Tom ministered to the woman who was beaten down by life after being sold over and over again and witnessing all of her children being sold. Later on, she got Legree drunk enough to pass out and she wanted Tom to swing the ax and kill him but Tom refused and he convinced her not to swing on him.

I won't go into detail about the old woman's escape but it involved an ingenious plan where she ran away and doubled back and hid in a part of the house for awhile until the slave catching heat died down. Regardless, Legree knew that Tom knew what happened to the woman. He told Tom that he would kill him if he didn't tell him. Legree was mad because the whip did nothing to break Tom's spirit like it had broken every other Negroe's. He was spooked by the spiritual power of Tom. Tom said that he knew but he wouldn't say where she was and he was willing to die for it. And that's what he did because Legree beat him to death. As he lay dying in the barn for two days, the son of his first Master....Young Massa George, finally makes it down to Louisiana to buy Tom back after a five year absence and bring him back to his family but he is too late. Tom dies in the arms of Massa George and when Legree gives him a smart comment about how he "doesn't sell dead Niggers", massa George turned around and punched him in the mouth...Then George has to go back to Kentucky and tell Tom's wife that he was dead. Tom's wife was able to be hired out and she worked for five years to save every penny to help buy Tom back. But after she found out he was dead, she walked out of the room to never be heard about again in the story.

Then George freed every last slave on the plantation in Kentucky and paid them wages to work if they wanted to stay.....Meanwhile, the Quadroon woman was able to escape and meet up with her husband in the Quaker community in Ohio en route to Canada. I won't go into the details of her husband but that's a long story also....

MORAL:

I know that I will never use the term "Uncle Tom" again. Yes, I think he was stupid for not running away or killing massa but he wasn't willing to turn on his own people regardless. His last Massa Legree said that he could cut up niggers instead of being cut up himself. I don't know what I would do if I was a slave and given that option. I don't think that I could take one crack of the whip on my back without bitching out and a lot of y'all would bitch out too. And none of you that are reading this have experienced life as a slave so you really can't say much against what people had to do back then. There were different situations on every plantation. I would consider Uncle Tom to be a hero for blacks and if you're a Christian, he's a hero for the faith of Christianity...

Plus, Eliza the Quadroon could pass for white with the right clothes and makeup...Ole black ass Tom wouldn't have it so easy trying to run away like she did. I'm sure that passing for white got you a lot farther up North a lot quicker than it did being a darkie. He did what he thought he had to do to save his wife and his family and he was willing to die for his own people.

I was completely ignorant to use the term Uncle Tom. I admit that. but now that I have read the book, I can now call another negro ignorant to uses the term. The next Negro that I hear use the term, I'll ask him/her "Have you even gone near the book in your life"? I'll guarantee you that anybody who really knows the story of Uncle Tom WON'T use that term in a derogatory way. I remember when they were calling Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom. There's no way in hell that Clarence Thomas would miss a chance to whip his own people in return for favors for the white man. How dare you call him an Uncle Tom? He doesn't deserve that honor.

I also know that there is no need to call me an Uncle Tom because I wouldn't even be willing lose my toenail for y'all negroes out here..Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and countless others died trying to wake black people up. Only to be killed and then the Jungle Bunny attitude returns. To hell with that. If you want to be ignorant, be ignorant. I won't waste any time besides writing in this blog trying to educate anybody. It isn't worth it.

There you have it. The most comprehensive breakdown of Uncle Tom's cabin available anywhere on the internet. And believe me I looked...May this article be spidered by the search engines, bring traffic, and live forever.....and ever.....and.....ever.................................Amen.

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