The main characters’ thinking about slavery as reflected in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

ABSTRACT

Uncle Tom’s Cabin which is written by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a story about the treatment and oppression of slaves. Uncle Tom's Cabin presents the problems of slavery and questions its establishment in the United State, a country that declares liberty and equality as the basic right of human life. The story shows cruelty of the slavery system as well as the description of the relationship between masters and slaves.

In this analysis the researcher will focus on the main two characters, namely Uncle Tom and George Harries. A comparison between Uncle Tom's life and George Harris' life will uncover the importance of education as a key to one's liberty. Uncle Tom represents a slave who is unaware of his right as human being. He is also unaware of his being oppressed. George Harris embodies the opposite condition. He is fully aware of his rights and his situation under slavery system. He knows that he deserves to have a better life in freedom. Then the researcher tries to describe their thinking about slavery and the psychological factors that influence them.

To achieve the above objectives of the study, this study is categorized as literary criticism since this study is emphasized on the analysis of a literary work. This primary data of this study are collected from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin. The researcher applies a psychological approach especially Alfred Adler’s theories which are talking about the individual psychology.

Based on the result of analysis, individual psychology of Alfred Adler is portrayed in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, instead of talking about a person's personality, with the traditional sense of internal traits, structures, dynamics, conflicts, and so on, he preferred to talk about Individual Psychology. After identifying and analyzing the influence of educational background to the way of two characters’ thinking about slavery, the researcher finds that learning methods which are applied in the process of individual psychology such: Inferiority Feelings and Compensation, Striving for Superiority, Style of Life, Social Interest, Creative Self, and Fiction Finalism.