Summary At the Halliday’s house, George and Eliza discuss their future in Canada but recognize the dangers they will face before they arrive there. The man who is to drive them to their next stop, Phineas Fletcher, arrives and says their pursuers are gathered in a nearby tavern and plan […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 17Summary and Analysis Chapter 15-16
Summary The narrative is interrupted for the history first of Augustine St. Clare and then of his cousin Ophelia. At the St. Clare home, St. Clare says Tom is to be the coachman. They are greeted by the household slaves, including the butler, Adolph, and “Mammy,” who had been Eva’s […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 15-16Summary and Analysis Chapters 11-14
Summary In a small-town Kentucky hotel, a stranger inspects a poster advertising a reward for a runaway slave named George, dead or alive. One of the Kentuckians says that if slaves are treated well they won’t run away, so he has no sympathy for the man offering this reward. The […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapters 11-14Summary and Analysis Chapter 10
Summary The scene shifts to Uncle Tom’s cabin, where Tom and Chloe are about to be parted. The children are enjoying the festive meal (Tom’s last breakfast at home) until their parents’ unhappiness demonstrates that this is an unhappy occasion. Mrs. Shelby appears to tell Tom goodbye and assure him […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 10Summary and Analysis Chapters 8-9
Summary Haley, frustrated by Eliza’s escape, goes back to the inn, where he chances to meet his old partner, Tom Loker, accompanied by a man named Marks. Over drinks, Loker and Marks commiserate with Haley and agree that slave women’s attachment to their children can be inconvenient. Haley and Loker, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapters 8-9Summary and Analysis Chapters 5-7
Summary Later that evening, Mr. Shelby tells his wife that he has sold Tom and little Harry. Mrs. Shelby is horrified; he has promised Tom his freedom, and she has assured Eliza her child is safe. Shelby admits that Haley held a mortgage on their property and that he was […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapters 5-7Summary and Analysis Chapter 4
Summary The narrative is interrupted again for a description of Uncle Tom and his family. His “cabin” is described as a one-room log house. Inside is Tom’s wife, Aunt Chloe, preparing an evening meal. Two young boys, Mose and Pete, are playing with a baby girl about a year old; […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 4Summary and Analysis Chapters 2-3
Summary In Chapter 2, the narrator pauses to describe Eliza as a young woman of beauty and grace, gently raised from childhood by Mrs. Shelby, and to tell of her marriage to George, who is the slave of a Shelby neighbor named Harris. Earlier in their marriage, Eliza lost two […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapters 2-3Summary and Analysis Chapter 1
Summary On a winter afternoon in the early 1850s, two white men, Shelby and Haley, discuss business in Shelby’s dining room on a Kentucky farm. Shelby is preparing to sell two slaves to Haley, a slave-trader: Someone named Tom, a capable, honest, Christian, is one. Haley demands another, and when […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1Character List
Uncle Tom The central character, a slave belonging to Shelby. Eliza and George Harris Mrs. Shelby’s servant and her husband; they have a young son, Harry. Arthur, Emily, and George Shelby A Kentucky farmer (Tom and Eliza’s owner), his wife, and teenaged son. Aunt Chloe Tom’s wife; she is the […]
Read more Character List