Home Theme Analysis

Uncle Tom's cabin, described early in the novel, represents the warmth and love of family life. It is a place Tom hearkens back to over the course of his trials. George Shelby wishes to bring Tom home, and at the close of the book, he points to Tom's cabin as a symbol of honest work and Christian faith. Other homes are juxtaposed with the cabin. The Shelby estate is genteel and placid, though disrupted upon the sale of Tom and Harry.

The St. Clare mansion is filled with color, wonderfully decorated, an island of comfort surrounded by the horrors of Louisiana plantation country. The Legree estate is dilapidated and used only to make money—eventually it is “haunted” by ghosts. Legree loves no one, and his destroyed home makes evident this lack of love. George, Eliza, and Harry's new home is, ironically, a place where they might live out the American ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but it is located in Montreal.

Home also takes on another dimension in the novel: that of a heavenly home after death, in God's abode. Eva claims she is going “home” when she is dying, and slaves who feel they have no home on earth may take comfort in the next life. In heaven the human family is reunited; even though black and white people may not live together in harmony on earth, a Christian belief in the afterlife will guarantee equality and peace.