Uncle Tom's Cabin Summary Chapter 1

In Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author conveys to the reader the desolate lives that blacks lived, under the oppression of slavery, in order to show the closed minded what was actually going on in the south. Stowe uses the splitting of black families, the wrongful treatment of the slaves and a torn sense of the whites morality to show this. At the start of the book Mr. Shelby comes to be in a financial bind and needs to sell some of his slaves to get out of the debt he owes to Mr. Haley (Chapter 1). This is where the tragic split of the Harris family starts. Eliza, Mrs. Shelby’s maid, overhears that her son is one of the slaves to be sold to settle the debt, she takes her child and runs away (Chapter 4). While her
Before Eliza takes Harry and runs, George tells her that he was going to escape to Canada and eventually save enough money to buy their freedom (Chapter 3). As Eliza is running from Mr. Haley and his horses she fears for her life but most of all she fears for the life of her child. Once she reaches the Ohio river she realizes the ice is too thick for the ferry to cross and she must stay the night. Once she realizes that Mr. Haley has caught up to her she has no choice but the cross the frozen river, and leaps onto the ice and eventually crosses the river where Mr. Haley cannot get to her. She may have escaped but she was a long way away from being free (chapter 7). Little did she know Mr. Haley hired two men, Loker and Marks, to hunt her down and told them they could keep Eliza as long as the brought him Harry (chapter 8). After a series of house switching, Eliza finds herself staying with some Quakers who upend Bering she was Eliza Harris realize she is the wife of George Harris who would be coming to the Quakers soon. The couple is finally back together again when George arrives to the estate and things seem to be looking up for this small slave family