Although not exactly symmetrical, it is balanced, with the Eliza plot, thematically less weighty but more conventionally "exciting" to readers and certainly more cheerful (both important considerations in a work that aims at popularity), presented more often in the first third of the novel, while the Tom plot, appearing alone only three times in the first thirteen chapters, dominates the second two-thirds of the book. If our design were drawn in more detail — subdividing the two plots into large and small X's and O's to show, for example, the Quaker sections of the Eliza plot and the St. Clare sections of the Tom plot — we would see a more various pattern emerging. And if the X's and O's were in color, with brighter colors for the chapters in which the dominant moods were hopeful, darker ones for those in which despair and pain dominate, then — well, the reader may imagine that visual effect. It would be striking.
It would also show movement, as the arrangement marked changes from the quiet colors of the opening chapters to the brighter and brighter hues of Eliza and George's escape through the northern states into Canada, interspersed more frequently with the darkening colors of Tom's captivity as he travels first down the Ohio, then the Mississippi to New Orleans, and finally up the Red River in Louisiana to Simon Legree's plantation. As both plots move, so does the novel's structure, although first the Tom plot and then the Eliza plot are delayed, time-wise, in order for each plot's chapters to be arranged most effectively in terms of the overall design.
