Examples of Critical Support Paragraphs #1: This paper’s three critical support paragraphs cover Experiences, Religion, and People Among the many influences that inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the collection of experiences Stowe had throughout her lifetime, and they are conspicuously reflected throughout her novel. On July 30, 1836, Harriet had “her first upclose look at slavery” (Elliot 17) when several hundred men in a mob stormed the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio (4). Witnessing this riot transformed Stowe’s life, and it was from that moment on she believed “something was missing from her life” (6). “Hatty knew people who helped escaped slaves, and she heard stories of abuse, rape, and the heartbreak of separated families” (17), and “many of these stories would come to life 17 years later in the pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (20). John Rankin was a minister Stowe knew who helped slaves in the Underground Railroad (20), and it was from this up-close encounter with this system that she drew much of the muse for her novel’s plot. “Cincinnati was a station on the underground railroad, and though not all the details can now be authenticated, we can see Harriet’s own experiences with slaveholders and abolitionists in many incidents and episodes” (Wagenknecht 157). Clearly, Eliza’s journey through various households along her path to freedom reflects these stories and experiences Stowe encountered involving the Underground Railroad. During the early autumn of 1833, Harriet and her friend Mary Dutton went across the Ohio River by ferry (Gerson 38). Not only was the Ohio River an important element in Stowe’s novel when Eliza “vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on the raft of ice beyond” (Stowe 69), but also her destination at a plantation owned by one of Samuel Foote’s friends “was later depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the plantation of Colonel Shelby” (Gerson 38). Personal experiences with African Americans were an essential element within in her novel as well. In 1839, Stowe hired a black girl as a servant, and although this girl was
Dedication to faith was an important aspect in Stowe’s life, and because of this, the impact it had on Uncle Tom’s Cabin is perceptibly reflected throughout its pages. Perhaps the person who had the greatest influence on Stowe was her father, and because he was a preacher who “lived intensely with his children and his God” (Johnson 580), his beliefs spread to Stowe (Elliot 12). He believed “that it is decided before birth whether a person is one of the elect who will go to heaven, and nothing a person does in life can change that” (12). Although it is unknown if Stowe completely accepted her father’s beliefs (Gerson 38), religion still influenced her writing immensely. While in church on a Sunday in February, Stowe was first moved to write her novel (Fritz 64). Picturing a vision where “a slave was being beaten to death by his master with the help of his two lackeys” (64), she was sent running home, and “was so shaken by this experience that when she went home, she wrote it all out” (64); the slave that she envisioned she called Tom (64). “From the opening chapters, there are echoes of Christ in Tom’s words and actions, suggestions that Tom somehow resembles Christ” (Claybaugh xxxii), and because of this “many readers noticed parallels between Hatty’s tale and the story of Christ’s dying on behalf of others” (Elliot 34). “Stowe was the first to imagine a slave as Christ” (Claybaugh xxxii), and by making the death of Uncle Tom filled with “scenes of blood cruelty” (Stowe 475), “Tom’s death, though tragic, is not in vain because it makes possible the freedom of so many others” (Elliot 34), clearly resembling the death of Christ. God’s image is further portrayed through not only Tom, but Eva as well, and they both “qualify as ‘saints’ who regenerate in both…religious conversion of the heart to Christian faith and moral conversion to the political cause of emancipation” (Gatta 313). “The original sin of American slavery not only divided slave families but also separated free citizens from their God” (313). However, because Uncle Tom’s Cabin creates a scenario where there is an “awakening to the power of God’s