The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
A world where love, faith, and family are tested by a law that calls people property.
Uncle Tom
A steady man with a worn Bible carries his home faith into every place that tries to own him.
Shelby house
A polished Kentucky parlor becomes the room where a child's future is priced over wine.
A man's faithfulness raises his price, exposing the cruelty beneath polite bargaining.
Read →Tom's Price
His companion, Mr. Shelby, had the appearance of a gentleman; and the arrangements of the house, and the general air of the housekeeping, indicated easy, and even opulent circumstances. As we before stated, the two were in the midst of an earnest conversation.
“That is the way I should arrange the matter,” said Mr. Shelby.
“I can’t make trade that way—I positively can’t, Mr. Shelby,” said the other, holding up a glass of wine between his eye and the light.
“Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere,—steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm like a clock.”
“You mean honest, as niggers go,” said Haley, helping himself to a glass of brandy.
“No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he really _did_ get it. I’ve trusted him, since then, with everything I have,—money, house, horses,—and let him come and go round the country; and I always found him true and square in everything.”
Shelby praises Tom's honesty, steadiness, and faith in the same breath that he is bargaining away Tom's body. Every virtue he lists, the man who managed his whole farm and could be trusted with money, house, and horses, is being converted into a higher asking price. Haley, meanwhile, cannot even hear the word "honest" without qualifying it, treating Tom's decency as a feature that raises the price rather than a reason not to sell a person at all. The kindness of the master and the cruelty of the trader turn out to run on the same logic.
The Shelby household - the kindest slavery is still slavery
The Shelbys are decent, humane slaveholders who are about to sell two people they love to pay a debt.
Tom’s Bible
A worn Bible follows Tom from cabin worship into Legree's attempt to break him.
Eliza Harris
A mother wraps her child close and turns terror into motion.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Uncle Tom’s Cabin World, as it plays on your phone
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