Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Anybody who uses "Uncle Tom" as a disparaging remark should be immediately required to read this novel. I know he doesn't revolt and lead a Nat Turner-esque ass-kicking rampage against even the cruelest slaveholder. But look at his life, his devotion to his family and faith and what they caused. George becomes an abolitionist, Legree pretty much kills himself, and an entire nation of readers were forced to think about how awful slavery was. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the second best selling book on the 19th Century. It spawned an outrageously popular stage play and was hotly debated all over the United States.  

What Stowe gives us is a heart-wrenchingly, quick moving, dual narrative which follows George and his wife Eliza and Tom. George and Eliza flee north when it becomes apparent that their owners are going to sell their son. Tom decides to stay. 

Many of the stereotypes of African Americans grew out of the novel and plays. But what we see is enslaved people who are people. They are good, they are bad, they are immature, they are heros, they are faithful, they are atheists, they are smart, they are dumb. They are very human. Stowe also gives them agency. The enslaved and the owners are in a constant struggle for power. Tom's power resides in his extraordinary Christianity and it's affect on lazy, basically good owners, and evil owners. And that's Stowe's message: Christianity and love will end slavery. She might have been partially right. Her book galvanized the North in such a way that they had the courage to stand up to the Fugitive Slave Law and Southern bullying. 

Besides George, Eva is the other youth in whom Stowe invests higher powers of observation and a sense of justice. Her death is heart wrenching. Stowe endows George and Eva with the power to change things. I think she gave up on the current generation of slaveholders and abolitionists, the future depended on which way the youngest would break.

Rating 10/10: Great great read. Exciting, engaging, and a look into daily life during slavery. What every historian of the era tries to elucidate comes through in touching humanity here. 

Moby Dick

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Alright, I read this a while ago so the plot details are not as fresh in my mind as I like. I do know one thing, there's a lot about whales. A whole lot. Whatever you want to call them: whales, leviathans, the great fish or any other of the numerous names Melville gives the big sea creatures, you'll learn about them in Moby Dick. And this is the problem. The story is awesome.  Ishmael is a great narrator. He's funny, he can spin a great action scene, he's a great relator of character and scene, he gets himself into dramatic situations, and he's got pretty much every different conflict you could want. His buddy Queequeg is maybe the coolest guy we've encountered in the classics so far. So Moby Dick is a masterpiece, right? A work of "can't put it down" literature to rival anything else I've ever read? Nope.

Quite simply about 45% of Moby Dick is really really boring. Our boy Ishmael decides he needs to prove he knows about whales and boy does he ever. We learn about every kind of whale, where they live, how to hunt them, their anatomy, and on and on and on. It just gets to be way too much. The character studies of Captain Ahab, Queequag, and the rest of the crew are brilliant and engrossing, but when they're separated by fifty pages about whale blubber you tend to get bogged down. But there is a lot of good.

Through the relationship between Queequag and Ishmael we get a look at mid-19th Century race and class relations. The book is genuinely funny at some points. Ahab is a fascinating (if over the top) character. The sea and the whale are front and center characters. Ahab's quest for the whale is all consuming and consumes the reader. I read the novel as a narrative about a guy chasing a whale at the expense of everything and everyone in his life, not as some metaphor for our desperate chase of the unattainable. Why do I not delve into these philosophical questions? Because Melville tells me not to!!

"So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory."

So maybe this is why we get so much info on whales, because otherwise people wouldn't believe a word of it. I also appreciate Melville saying this is NOT an allegory, it's about a guy chasing down an asshole whale. If you're a good enough writer (Melville is) then you don't have to shoehorn metaphors and symbolism into a novel, they just happen because we can relate to the experience of the characters. 

Rating 6.5/10: Too much whale talk = too boring for me. Let me edit this thing down to a tight 400 pages and we can talk. I like Melville's short stories better.