Uncle Tom's Cabin

As quickly as page two, I was reminded of The Adventures of Huck Finn. It was one of my favorite books I read last year and might even rank in my top 20 of all time favorites. Because of my love of Huck Finn, I have high hopes for Uncle Tom's Cabin. Hopefully Harriet Beecher Stowe will not disappoint. I can't imagine that such a well known book would be disappointing, but one never knows.

Slavery is a topic that just boggles my mind. I can't imagine being on either side of it: the slaveholder or the slave. The distorted beliefs one must have in order to have a slave is outrageous. When I was a kid my brother and I used to make bets and whoever lost the best had to be the other person's "slave." Even then I felt bad bossing my brother around. Shocker, I know! I would usually just have him do stupid little things, but he took a much different approach. When I was the "slave," I had to do all sorts of ridiculous things. And, I usually wasn't very happy about it. I didn't understand how he could ask me to do things when he was supposed to love me as his sister. Maybe I was just a little oversensitive, but I think it was a fair feeling.

Even though the situations are totally different, I was able to get a little taste of what it would be like having someone determine my every move. What is even harder for me to imagine is what it would be like to be traded. Slaves would be taken away from their families. I gather this would make being a slave 100 times worse. It is one things to be enduring something horrific, and it is another to be enduring it without your loved ones.

After this first section of reading, I have a pretty good feeling that I will be satisfied in terms of how it compares to Huck Finn.