Chapters 29-33

This forum is for the discussion of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chapters 29-33

St. Claire is buried and Marie has her hand with the slaves. She is very cruel and heartless. We find that all the slaves are at the mercy of their masters.

St. Claire's direction in life was noted as "driftwood." And so he didn't make arrangements for his slaves upon his death. They all will be sold and Tom would not be free.

Tom lands in a slave warehouse and meets up with a mother and daughter. Here Stowe gives us yet another sad breakup of a family. Tom is sold to a horrible master. As read in Spark Notes, Stowe is now going to give us the "cruel" side of the master first hand with our characters.

At the Legree farm there is no commrodery (sp). The two head slaves are enemies. Legree thinks this is a good thing. One will tell on the other. We also see that there is no religion at this farm. I assume that the harsher the master the less religion there is.

Tom is asked to whip a fellow slave. He refuses and gets beaten almost to death. There is one line that some slaves won't cross and they finally say I'm rather die, and I believe them.

We are definitely begining to see the "harder" side of slavery. In the previous sections, the slaves haven't faced the kind of abuse and injustice as in this section. I believe Stowe is now trying to shock the reader with what other possiblities are out there.

I really enjoy your insight. As we have read in the Well Educated Mind, we should be trying to focus on "what the author" was trying to tell us. I keep forgetting that.

The slave ware house chapter portrayed how awful the selling of slaves really was. All the slaves from St. Clares home no matter what their position are now thrown together and are all at the very bottom of the pecking order. No longer is Adolph able to be the 'pretthy boy'. I hated reading about Susan and Emmalines plight. I felt like crying reading about susans worries for her daughter and her diaghters niavaty in what was to become of them.
I have heard of people refr to 'Simon legree" in other contexts and never knew who the guy was, so it was interesting to read about him. I felt revolted. His cruelty in taking toms possessions was disgsting.