THE TRAGIC WORLDVIEW IN HARRIET BEECHER STOWE’S UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

Abstract

adopted freedom and also legalizes slavery. Those contradictions were born in social conditions between the North and the South states. People in the North who were against slavery believed that people in the South constructed the conspiracy to expand slavery. This happened because people in the South needed a new land for planting cotton. With the expansion, the system will automatically expand slavery due to the addition of new states. In other words, slavery will be more spreaded out and many slaves become a victim of the system. There is a fugitive slave law that frees anyone to catch the runaway slave. That law makes many slaves be caught and punished. That condition does not make some slaves give up to fight for their independence. However, there are some slaves who do the opposite things. There are people who surrendered to the situation and blame their fate. There is also someone who has a tragic mind like what happen in Uncle Tom. He does not accept the situation of slavery, but he still stay to face it with his faith to the God. Uncle Tom believes that God will guide and save him. Even that hope never happen to him. Considering that phenomenon, this study applies the Genetic structuralism theory which tries to find the worldview that appears in the novel. The result of this thesis shows that struggle of Uncle Tom's tragic views which expressed by Stowe's thought as a collective subject, and also the human fact and worldview that appears at that time. Slavery system made several slaves who does not believe in God existence viii finally give up and doing nothing for their future. While the other slaves who has a faith to God are have a strength to runaway and gain their independence. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin describes clearly the suffering of black people in America as a slave. I found the existence of homologies from some parts of the story in the novel as a super-structure and the human facts that occurred in the 1850s as the infra-structure. Harriet Beecher Stowe was able to capture and express the worldview of social class, so that the novel becomes the media to raise awareness of individuals in social class member at that time.