Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Images by Julia Nackley
In the three images of this particular scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin the picture is of the same thing but different takes on it. The scene is of Eliza running away with her child to get to a free land.
In the image on the far left it is the one most like what the book describes. She was running away and she did not have time to put her own shoes on. In the book it is described that the river she is running over is iced over all the way. When she gets to the other side of the river in the story they say there was a man who helped her off of the iced over river and onto the land to get to a safe space. This picture is the only one of the three that show the man and the fact that the entire river is iced over because you can see both sides of it.
The middle picture is closest to the first picture because you can still see the house in the background that she is running away from and you can see the land she is running to. The river you can pretty clearly see is iced over from edge to edge. The main difference between the two is the fact that this one is in black and white. The black and white give this picture a more desperate effect. Eliza looks more distraught in the picture and the amount of detail with the lines it was drawn with also makes the picture itself look more worn down and tired. Another main difference is that you cannot see the man she eventually meets by the edge of the water, so she looks like she is running to a land with nothing there to help her.
The third photo is the most different from all of the rest of them. This picture is zoomed in on just Eliza and the small child. It is in black and white again which like before makes the photo seem like she is in a hopeless situation. Like the first picture she does not have shoes on, but unlike the first and second pictures her hat is still on her head. A main difference with this one and the other two is the ice on the river does not appear to be covering the river as much and this gives the picture almost a cliffhanger of if she is going to make it or not. The final thing in the version of the picture that stands out the most is the fact that you cannot see where she is going which makes you wonder, unlike the other two, where she is going or if she is even close to making it across the river.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Portfolio by Sophia Gamboa
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist who came from the famous, religious Beecher family. She later became an author and authored many novels. Her most popular, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a story of a slave named Tom. In this book, the most popular was chapter seven “THE MOTHER’S STRUGGLE.” This chapter was directed toward mothers and exhibits the rhetoric of Pathos. It is an emotional story that is meant to hook its audience. The image above gives an illustration of what is happening in the chapter “THE MOTHER’S STRUGGLE” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The image above shows the strong maternal bond between Eliza and her young son. A woman is seen clutching her son and running through an icy river on the brink of breaking. As Stowe explains the context of the story, she expresses how the character Eliza knows she must cross the Ohio River and needs strength and motivation to keep going. When she reaches the Gamboa 2
river, she contemplates what she is about to accomplish for half a second before jumping onto the icy water, “The huge green fragment of ice on which she aligned pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy, she leaped to another and still another cake: –stumbling, –leaping, –slipping, –springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone–her stockings cut from her feet–while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side.” Eliza makes her way through the frozen river with her young son, terrified and cold. Stowe creates this touching story to evoke tender, and motherly feelings to capture her readers.
Chapter seven in Uncle Tom’s Cabin exhibits Pathos by expressing an emotional story of a woman escaping slavery with her young son. The portrait above depicts the events occurring in this chapter, about a woman named Eliza. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s story about Eliza crossing the Ohio River creates a sentimental feeling about the relationship between mothers and their children and this painting helps the readers visualize Stowe’s vision in her writing.
