Give a detailed character analysis Simon Legree in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beacher Stowe.

Simon Legree is a villain in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beacher Stowe. He is Tom’s third master and his murderer. He buys Tom to work on his plantation on the Red River in South. His plantation shows that he is a picture of misconduct and decay. The main thing about Simon Legree is that he is a hard hearted tyrant. He never softens. Cassy considers him ‘devil’ Now we discuss his character in a depth.

          Legree is a well-drawn character. He is short, strong and ugly. He wears dirty pants and keeps his checked shirt open down the chest. He keeps his mouth stuffed with tobacco. He is fond of bullying them. He behaves with the slaves as if they were cattle. He tells them that he is a cruel taskmaster and wants his slaves to be dumb like cattle. He has kept trained dogs to catch a slave if he or she ever tries to run away.

          Legree is an impudent, rude and an arrogant. We find at the warehouse, Legree conducting a thorough examination of a group of slaves before biding for them. He open Tom’s jaw to examine his teeth, sees his biceps and makes him leap in the air to see how fit and strong he is. He does not spare young Emmeline this shameful examination. We find his rude, cruel and an arrogant behaviour in the following remarks as he says to Emmeline,

“See these bones, These have

grown hard as iron with

niggers. I ain’t soft anywhere.”

          Legree’s attitude to religion is negative. He asks Tom to give up his faith. He calls the Bible a useless book and tells Tom to throw it to fire. He tells Tom that God would not help him. He does not like well mannered and well-dressed Tom. He does not appreciate Tom’s virtues; he hates goodness of Tom. Legree tries very hard to kill love and charity in Tom’s nature. In this way, Legree is anti-religion man.

          Legree’s plantation is a hellish place where slaves exist in a state of living death. There is neither hope nor relief from misery for them. Their plight is absolutely hopeless. The slaves had to work from morning to evening. They were housed in wooden cabins where even a bed did not exist. The food they ate was poor and there were no facilities of any kind. Legree employed cruel slave-driver for supervising and lashing the slaves. It is like a hell on the earth where death alone can bring deliverance to luckless slaves. Cassy point outs

“There’s nothing here

but evil and long, long

despair.”

          Legree is a revengeful person. Once Tom helps a sick woman who was ordered to work unwillingly. Annoyed by this, Legree orders Tom to beat that lady. But this was quite against of Tom’s nature and so he clearly denies to follow it. For Legree, this behavior is unbelievable and so he orders to beat Tom severely. He say,

“Here is a religious dog come

to teach us poor creatures

how to be good! Ain’t I your

master?  Didn’t I pay twelve

hundred dollars for you? Ain’t

you mine now, body and soul.”

          This remark shows us his cruelty. He punishes Tom for sympathy and help. He wants turn him into a cruel slave-driver but that is not to be. He does not understand the source of Tom’s inner strength. Like a devil, he tortures the saintly man and kills him in the end.

          Simon Legree presents a sharp contrast to Uncle Tom’s former master Mr. Shelby. The Christian virtues of love are totally absent in his character.  He is total absence of the human feeling of kindness in his nature. He stands for all that is evil in human nature. In a short, it is not exaggeration that Legree is an incarnation of the darkest evil.