Uncle Tom's Cabin

Like most good works of writing, the theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe seems to be Life Sucks and Then You Die. Here is a quotation from chapter 2: "Yes Eliza, it's all misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I'm a poor, miserable, forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that's all. What's the use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to be anything? What's the use of living? I wish I was dead!" And another, from chapter 18: "I looks like gwine to heaven, an't thar where white folks is gwine? S'pose they'd have me thar? I'd rather go to torment, and get away from Mas'r and Missis. I had so."

In spite of this, I'm very glad I read it. Powerful, disturbing, enlightening. I remember in high school a kid being warned against reading it because of how disturbing it is. Anyway, my big take-home message I got from it was that slavery wasn't all that long ago (book was published in 1852), and our society still hasn't recovered from it. A whole race of people was treated in such a way that it would be impossible to recover quickly.