Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

by

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Themes and Colors
Slavery and Race Theme Icon
Christianity and Christian Charity Theme Icon
Women Theme Icon
Home Theme Icon
Freedom Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Home Theme Icon

Uncle Tom's cabin, described early in the novel, represents the warmth and love of family life. It is a place Tom hearkens back to over the course of his trials. George Shelby wishes to bring Tom home, and at the close of the book, he points to Tom's cabin as a symbol of honest work and Christian faith. Other homes are juxtaposed with the cabin. The Shelby estate is genteel and placid, though disrupted upon the sale of Tom and Harry.

The St. Clare mansion is filled with color, wonderfully decorated, an island of comfort surrounded by the horrors of Louisiana plantation country. The Legree estate is dilapidated and used only to make money—eventually it is “haunted” by ghosts. Legree loves no one, and his destroyed home makes evident this lack of love. George, Eliza, and Harry's new home is, ironically, a place where they might live out the American ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but it is located in Montreal.

Home also takes on another dimension in the novel: that of a heavenly home after death, in God's abode. Eva claims she is going “home” when she is dying, and slaves who feel they have no home on earth may take comfort in the next life. In heaven the human family is reunited; even though black and white people may not live together in harmony on earth, a Christian belief in the afterlife will guarantee equality and peace.

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Home Quotes in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Below you will find the important quotes in Uncle Tom's Cabin related to the theme of Home.
Chapter 3 Quotes

I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness; I can’t trust in God. Why does he let things be so?

Related Characters: George Harris (speaker), Eliza Harris
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

How easy white folks al’us does things!

Related Characters: Aunt Chloe (speaker)
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:

Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters . . . . Having, naturally, an organization in which the morale was strongly predominant, together with a greater breadth and cultivation of mind than obtained among his companions . . . .

Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

And you shall have good times . . . . Papa is very good to everybody, only he always will laugh at them.

Related Characters: Eva St. Clare (speaker), Uncle Tom, Augustine St. Clare
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it . . . . But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

It’s we mistresses that are the slaves, down here.

Related Characters: Marie St. Clare (speaker)
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

But you haven’t got us. We don’t own your laws; we don’t own your country; we stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty till we die.

Related Characters: George Harris (speaker), Tom Loker, Marks
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

It’s jest no use tryin’ to keep Miss Eva here . . . She’s got the Lord’s mark in her forehead.

Related Characters: Uncle Tom (speaker), Eva St. Clare
Page Number: 313
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Quotes

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer . . . .For, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 511
Explanation and Analysis: