Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Near the end of the book, after George Shelby frees his
slaves, he tells them that, when they look at Uncle Tom’s cabin,
they should remember their freedom and dedicate themselves to leading
a Christian life like Uncle Tom’s. The sight of Uncle Tom’s cabin
on George Shelby’s property serves as a persistent reminder to him
of the sufferings Tom experienced as a slave. The cabin also becomes
a metaphor for Uncle Tom’s willingness to be beaten and even killed
rather than harm or betray his fellow slaves—his willingness to
suffer and die rather than go against Christian values of love and
loyalty. The image of the cabin thus neatly encapsulates the main
themes of the book, signifying both the destructive power of slavery
and the ability of Christian love to overcome it.
Eliza’s Leap
The scene of Eliza’s leap across the half-frozen Ohio
river constitutes the most famous episode in Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. The scene also serves as an important metaphor.
The leap from the southern to the northern bank of the river symbolizes
in one dramatic moment the process of leaving slavery for freedom.
Indeed, Eliza’s leap from one bank to the next literally constitutes
a leap from the slave-holding states to the non-slave-holding states,
as the Ohio River served as the legally recognized divide between
South and North. The dangers Eliza faces in her leap, and the courage
she requires to execute it successfully, represent the more general
instances of peril and heroism involved in any slave’s journey to
freedom.
Geography
Uncle Tom’s Cabin uses the North to represent
freedom and the South to represent slavery and oppression. Obviously
the opposition is rooted in history. However, Stowe embellishes
the opposition so as to transform it from literal to literary. Two
main stories dominate the novel—the story of Eliza and George and
the story of Uncle Tom. One story serves as an escape narrative,
chronicling Eliza and George’s flight to freedom. The other story
is a slavery narrative, chronicling Uncle Tom’s descent into increasingly
worse states of oppression. Not surprisingly, the action in the
escape narrative moves increasingly northward, with Canada representing
its endpoint and the attainment of freedom by the escaped slaves.
The action in the slavery narrative moves increasingly southward,
with Tom’s death occurring on Legree’s plantation in rural Louisiana,
far into the Deep South. This geographical split represents the
wide gulf between freedom and slavery and plays into Stowe’s general
use of parallelism and contrast in making her political points.
