Tom is faithful to God and man. Facing his third cruel master Simon Degree's threatening and flogging, he doesn't give up his faith in God and insists that his soul belongs to Him, not to him, though he bought him with twelve hundred dollars. Tom is also very faithful to man, such as his first and third masters who give him all their property to manage. Once, Mr. Shelby let him to go to Cincinnati alone to do business for him, Tom doesn't run away, instead, he comes back because he thinks, "Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn't!" (P.4). Just as he himself asks Mr. Shelby, "… have I ever broke word to you, or go contrary to you, "specially since I was a Christian?" (P.53). St. Clare, a careless master, who gives Tom a bill without looking at it, trusts Tom so much that "Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty", yet "nothing but an impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could have kept him from it" (P.189).
Tom's another distinctive characteristic is forgiveness, which is so extraordinary that it's almost divine, and which we can see in Jesus Christ. Jesus forgives those who persecute him for he prays, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"5. Tom also forgives his third cruel master Legree and Legree's two overseers who harshly flogged him by saying, "I forgive ye, with all my soul!" (P.384)
Tom is submissive and obedient but only to God and according to his conscience. When Jesus is facing his immediate bitter death, he prays in the Mount of Olives, "…yet, not my will but yours be done"6. Tom says similar words, "The Lord's will be done!" (P.299) when he learns he will be sold to the south after the unexpected death of St. Clare. Yet his obedience is not to everyone. For example, once Legree requires Tom to flog a weak slave woman, Tom refuses, saying, "…but this yer thing I can't feel it right to do; and mas'r, I never shall do it-never!" (P.336) So his obedience is no blind. He only obeys what he believes right.
Why Mrs. Stowe depicted Tom as a Christ-like figure? Perhaps she wanted to elicit sympathy from her readers most of who were whites. She wanted to inform her readers that such pious good man died under the slavery, thus hoped them to realize it was wrong to keep such an evil system in a Christian country. In a word, she intended to win the support of her readers by striking their strings of emotions.
Most of us who have read this book will agree that Tom, an almost perfect, immaculate character without any human weakness is too good to exist in real life. So the portrait of Uncle Tom tends to be rather pale. Besides, the image of Tom is a stereotype with typical African features, typical African American accent and supposed typical good disposition of that race. Thus, Tom is more a representative of a kind of person rather than an individual.
ii. Little Eva
Another image, radiating with spiritual luster, is Evangeline St. Clare, namely, the "little Eva". The name "Evangeline" definitely promotes the idea and image of angel. In appearance, she resembles an earthly angel-beautiful, always dressed in white. In spirit, she is full of love, like a good guardian angel. Once her father asks her which way she likes best-to live as they do at her uncle's up in Vermont, or to have a house full of servants, as they do. Eva answers that their way is the pleasantest because "it makes so many more people round you to love" (P.172). The reason she asks her Papa to buy Tom is "to make him happy" (P.140). When she hears the story of Prue, she doesn't want to go out in her new carriage again for the terrible story "sink(s) into her heart" (P.203). In her eyes, there are many puzzling things, such as why Prue is so unhappy, why Tom should be separated from his wife and children, why no one loves that black little girl, Topsy. What she only knows and does is to love all the people around her. Just as her name "Evangeline" suggests, she is an evangelist to everyone. She shares the Gospel with all her father's plantation slaves as well as questioning her own father's faith. This action by Eva saves many lost souls and gives them hope. It also prompts the soul-searching and self-reevaluation in her father. When dying, she gives every slave servant in her house a lock of fair golden hair, asking him or her to be Christians, so that they could see each other in heaven. Eva is delicate and dies early, which "dramatize the fact that she does not belong to the world. This is especially evident when the angel is a child, like Stowe's Eva."7
Through the eyes of the angelic child Mrs. Stowe exposed the evils of the institution of slavery. Eva asks her father to free the slaves after her death. Mrs. Stowe called on people to do as or more than the child does.
