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1.3 Research Methodology
This essay highlights Christian's mental paralysis to the black people in Uncle Tom's Cabin by analyzing and comparing the characters and fate of the people oppressed by slavery.
1.4 Organization of This Study
1.4.1 American Slavery
1.4.2 The Black Slaves Living in Christian
1.4.3 Characters of Those Mentally Paralyzed Black People
1.4.4 Reasons that Christian Could Paralyze the Black People's Mentality
1.4.5 Liberating from The Mental Paralysis
2 American Slavery
"In the fifteenth century , Europeans began to import slaves from the African continent. The discovery of the Americas increased the demand for cheap labor and therefore increased the slave trade. During the next 400 years, slave traders kidnapped about15 million Africans and sold them into slavery. When the American Civil War began in 1860, there were about 4.5 million blacks in the United States, most of them slaves. The vast majority of slaves lived in the south ,where they worked in cotton ,tobacco, and sugar-cane fields. Most were deprived of a formal education, although a few were taught to read and write .Their African religious practices were discouraged , and they were forced to convert to Christianity." (Ethel Tiersky & Martin Tiersky, 2006) As slavery became part and parcel of southern way of life and got embedded in its social structure, southern whites tightened their control over black slaves and exploited them to the maximum degree possible. In response to the iron-fisted approach of white Southerners, black slaves waged uprisings and rebellions across the south to demonstrate their unquenchable will for freedom and self-autonomy. Southern whites, in turn, increased their repression, leaving bloodshed sprinkling on the soil of southern plantations. The slaves suffered greatly, both physically and emotionally. They worked long hours in the fields . They lived in crowded, primitive houses. Some were abused by cruel masters. Often, slave owners separated black families by selling a slave's husband, wife, or child. As St Clare put it, "there can be no civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower." (Stow， 2011: 325) It was not until the conclusion of the civil war that the whole slave issue was finally brought to an end.(Li Bingwen, 2012)
3 The Black Slaves Living under Christianity
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, there are a large group of black slaves. Influenced by factors such as appearance, ability and the masters' character, however, they acquired distinguished treatment as well as different degrees of education. And different degree of education gave the black different understanding and recognition of Christian doctrine, which further led the black slaves to launch different degrees of resistance to the slavery which had oppressed and slaughtered them for generations. Mrs Stowe mainly depicted four kinds of black slaves :Quimbo and Sambo, Tom, Eliza, George. They suffered varying degrees of mental paralysis which led them to be apathetic to the outside world and passive in adverse situation. Meanwhile, these people stand for four different stages of antislavery. 来~自^751论+文.网www.751com.cn/
3.1 Quimbo and Sambo
Slaves who knew nothing about Christian doctrine (eg.Quimbo and Sambo ) ---those who never rebel. As principal hands on the plantation, Quimbo and Sambo were trained by the cruel master Legree in savageness and brutality .As a result, they often treated the black who suffered the same miserable life as themselves more tyrannically and cruelly than the white ones. These kinds of slaves themselves often also suffered cruel treatment physically and mentally. In consequence, they became callous, unthinking, and brutal and helped their masters to suppress their compatriot, not to mention rebellion.