And at the very center of the book, in Chapter 23, juxtaposed in their own chapter by the reasonable argument of two men who then break off arguing to play a game of backgammon, are the two 12-year-old boys, Henrique and Dodo. One, the master, hits the other, the slave, in the face with his riding whip, knocks him down, and beats him. This is the only appearance of either of these characters in the novel, and their encounter is understated — yet its position in the book makes it literally of central importance. One wonders if the placing of this particular "fragment" was not a conscious decision by the mosaic artist.
Until the twentieth century, the design of a novel as basically linear was more or less taken for granted. That is, indeed, the sort of design first apparent to a reader whose acquaintance with any book is most likely to be based on time and direction, from beginning to end. But viewed at once, overall (as is possible after we have read the complete book), a novel's design may be startling and revealing. As Harriet Beecher Stowe herself suggested, and as other writers have since noted, Uncle Tom's Cabin's structure works both in a linear way and as an overall pattern — a mosaic, a quilt — which may be examined visually in order to discover unexpected patterns of movement and opposition.
