Reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

While I was reading the critics from James Baldwin,I mostly agreed what he said--his thought about the sentimentality hypocrisy against the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Sentimentality is more like a mask of her thought of racism and that black needs salvation. Speaking of this case, if we neglect the part of the slavery description, it can probably be seen as a novel related to religion with truthful sentimentality throughout the plot.However, that is not the case and it brought a lot of controversial by putting out the topic that which side is right or wrong. Her use of words, seemed touched but with a clear fact that she had the issue with racism, with the example:”"What! our Tom?--that good, faithful creature!--been your faithful servant from a boy! O, Mr. Shelby!--and you have promised him his freedom, too,--you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it. Well, I can believe anything now,--I can believe _now_ that you could sell little Harry, poor Eliza's only child!" said Mrs. Shelby, in a tone between grief and indignation.” By saying our Tom, good faithful creature could not disguise he was a slavery with no basic rights and social level. In addition, it implicitly show that only the white people can “save” and “free” the black but the black themselves. It could see that Baldwin did support with the stowe's show of the problem of slavery,only that her description of the problem made her novel worthless and made no much sense.

Furthermore, even though the conversations and disputes between St.Clare and Ophelia  on page 219 was around the unfair treatment about the slaves,sarcastically, there was always argument but no solution and action. This hypocrisy was fulfill the entire novel, reflect the indifferent of the society.

The last thing,that Stowe's favored the christianity as she wrote in the novel that Uncle Tom was symboled  like a hero because of his belief of Christianity,which in other words reflected his favor that that the slaves need spirit freedom and salvation.

Baldwin’s critique changed the way I felt when I first read the novel, from my entire sympathy to rationally critical thinking about what the novel really said and how it aimed to influence the society.