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Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
"Uncle Tom's Cabin", by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a novel with two different plots, with many different characters. The main characters of the book are Tom, the Christian martyr, and the Eliza Harris, the desperate mother. The book also features how Christianity plays a role in the characters lives. While Tom travels south to slavery and oppression, Eliza journeys north to freedom and opportunity.
Christianity plays an extremely important role in the book. Each character has a certain view on the subject, and therefore represented on how they interpret it. Tom is the generous and forgiving soul who believes wholeheartedly in God and his salvation. He ensures the safety of the rest of Shelby's slaves by allowing himself to be sold to the slave trader Mr. Haley. Towards the end of the book, after a kind master, he bought by an abusive plantation owner who orders his two "overlords" to beat some sense into him. Afterwards, before he dies, he forgives the plantation owner, Simon Legree, and the two overlords, Sambo and Quimbo. Because of his forgiveness, Sambo and Quimbo are redeemed and are converted into Christians.
The Shelby's were, overall, morally strong people. Tom was Mr. Shelby's servant for years, even when Mr. Shelby was an infant. Stowe used Christianity to deeply prove a point in the book—as Mr. Shelby wasn't a Christian, he sold Tom. He did feel sorrow for selling Tom, but not enough to sacrifice money and comfort. Mrs. Shelby, on the other hand, was a strong Christian woman, and even her relatively small part had an influential impact on the story, and she was ready to sacrifice the niceties that she had to save Tom and Harry.
Another morally strong family, the Birds, also had a small part in the story. Mr. Bird was a senator, who even though he supported the Fugitive Slave Act, ended up aiding a runaway slave himself. His wife, Mrs. Bird, was not much interested in politics, but after hearing about the Act, asked her husband if he supported it. An argument ensued, in which Mr. Bird knew he was wrong. Mrs. Bird insisted that slavery was terrible and a great injustice upon mankind, while Mr. Bird maintained that it wasn't agreeable but certainly not wrong. During their disagreement, one of their servants informed them that a slave had come to their door asking for help. Mrs. Bird persuaded her husband to help Eliza, which he did well. They gave her food and clothes, even some clothes of their dead sons, in a very Christian-like manner. The next day he even drove her to a sort of Underground Railroad that eventually helped Eliza escape.