12 Years A Slave Themes

680 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: 12 years a slave overview

The film 12 Years a Slave and the slave narrative The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass are two stories about two different slave men. In both Solomon Northup’s story and Frederick Douglass’ story, music is also shown as a way of dehumanizing the characters through forced performance and the robbing of one’s passion, as well as humanizing them by the expression of emotion. Music is shown as a theme of struggle and growth, a form of expression, conveying different types of emotions and a way that connects the slaves. In the beginning of the film, 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup is shown playing the violin at a predominantly white party for the dancing guests. This scene is before Solmon is kidnapped to be a slave and Solomon is Singing this song is possibly to pass the time and in attempt to distract the fellow slaves from the terrible ordeal that is their enslaved life. There is a power that the slaves have from expressing emotion through music and singing. Slaves normally sing to express the feelings that they are not allowed to outwardly show or articulate to the whites in control around them because they are powerless and not considered human. The slaves on the farms and plantations use singing while working to show, feeling of pain and to release anguish while working in the fields. Douglass talks about how slaves “would sing, as a chorus, to words which would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves” (Douglass, 29). The meaning behind the songs they would sing in the fields and in their daily lives had meaning behind them that no one could truly understand if they were not slaves themselves. An interesting scene in 12 Years a Slave is when one of the white men on the plantation sing “Run N**** Run” to the slaves while the slaves are doing their work. This scene is quite strange and the way he sings is quite menacing because this man is taking singing; something that the slaves do normally during work, and putting a different meaning to the song and what he’s doing by singing

Show More
Related

  • 12 Years A Slave Freedom Quotes

    465 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Solomon Northup’s memoir, Twelve Years A Slave, he depicts the lives of African Americans living in the North as extremely painful and unjust. Additionally, they faced many hardships everyday of their lives. For one, they were stripped of their identities, loved ones, and most importantly their freedom. To illustrate this, Northup says, “He denied that I was free, and with an emphatic oath, declared that I came from Georgia” (20). This quote discusses the point in which Northup was kidnapped, and how he was ultimately robbed of his freedom, as well as his identity. Furthermore, not only were his captors cruel and repulsive, so was the way in which they treated African Americans. For instance, Northup states, “…Freeman, out of patience, tore Emily from her mother by main force, the two clinging to each other with all their might” (50). In this example, a mother is being parted from her child despite her cries and supplications, the slave owner

    Read More

  • Field Hollers In African American History

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    We typically think of slaves as a mistreated African American. Thats not all they were, they sang, they read, they were a huge part of our history we don't even acknowledge. They contributed a lot to our music, you could say they were the roots of jazz and blues. Slaves sang almost every moment of their life, there is many different categories of their music, but one of the most interesting is field hollers. Field hollers contain a lot of information on the slave(s). This means emotion is strong in these songs. You can find three main subjects in their tunes, those three are; sad, happy, informative, or passing time.

    Read More

  • Joe Turner's Come and Gone

    751 Words  | 2 Pages

    " From the deep and the near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African slaves wander into the city...isolated, cut off from memory...they arrive stunned with a song worth singing..their pockets lined with fresh hope, marked men and women seeking to scrape from the narrow..shaping the malleable parts of themselves into a new identity as a free man of definite and sincere worth.

    Read More

  • Music In Lawrence Levine's 'The Quest For Certainty'

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    African-American slaves may not have had the formal education that many of their white slave owners possessed, but they intuitively knew that the labor they toiled through each and every day was unjust. This dynamic of unfairness brought about a mindset in which slaves would critique the workings of slavery. To many people’s understanding, slavery was an invasively oppressive institution; Levine however, noted, “for all its horrors, slavery was never so complete a system of psychic assault that it prevented the slaves from carving out independent cultural forms” . Slave spirituals were a part of the independent cultural form that enslaved African-Americans produced; these songs had numerous functions and critiquing slavery served as one of

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, an African American male describes his day as a slave and what he has become from the experience. Douglass writes this story to make readers understand that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that he still has intellectual ability even though he is a slave. In the story, these messages are shown frequently through the diction of Frederick Douglass.

    Read More

  • Douglass Paradox

    1015 Words  | 3 Pages

    “He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush.” (5) From the following quote, we can see how Douglass made use of a paradox to show how the slave owners used more brutal force to subjugate and hush the slave. It shows an irony as well to the fact that the slave owners used a more brutal force to silence the slave from further moanings or complaints. Douglass uses this to show how the slave owners had a sense of pleasurement from the punishment they gave to the slaves, as the slave owners viewed the slaves as tools, not even considered to be a human being. Colonel Llyod Douglass’s slave owner is shown in this example for the punishments the conditions he treated his slaves with. Colonel Llyod is shown to have no sympathy in which shows how the minds corrupted by slavery could influence the human mind to believe the slaves as nothing more than just dispensable tools to only work for the benefits. Douglass then uses his past experience to depict the harshness of slavery “Their songs revealing the highest joy and the deepest sadness.” (13) Douglass uses a sadistic diction, to further persuade the reader to show how the slaves were trapped in their illusion without education. During this time, slaves only knew a common language to use singing as a form of entertainment. Without education, it prevented several great people and thinkers to develop and arise, but Frederick Douglass being the special case has given the reader a first-hand viewpoint on his experience and opinion on

    Read More

  • Solomon Northup's 12 Years A Slave By Solomon Northup

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave narrates the author’s life story as a free Africa-American man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South. Northup was born and raised, lived, worked, married, and raised a family in New York as a free black male. Northup was a farmer, and a multi-task laborer and also a talented violin player. In the year of 1841, two scam men offered him profitable work playing violin in a circus, and then Northup think about the offer and traveled with them to Washington, D.C., where he was drugged, and sold as a slave into the Red River region of Louisiana.

    Read More

  • Duke Ellington, Black, Brown And Beige, And Its Importance

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

    Black, Brown and Beige is a Jazz symphony composed by Duke Ellington that first premiered in 1943. This symphony holds great importance to the black community, because it was written in a tone about the Negro journey in America. It is one of the longest works composed by Duke Ellington with three parts. In this composition he targets racial identity in the African American community, and also gives a spiritual sense to the music by featuring Mahalia Jackson; a popular gospel singer at the time. The purpose and intent of Black, Brown and Beige was to create a work in remembrance of the struggles of African Americans in the United States, because up until the 1940's music from the black community was not saved on a wide basis.1

    Read More

  • Solomon Northup's Relationship with His Slave Master

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his true-life narrative "Twelve Years a Slave," Solomon Northup is a free man who is deceived into a situation that brings about his capture and ultimate misfortune to become a slave in the south. Solomon is a husband and father. Northup writes:

    Read More

  • Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

    1673 Words  | 4 Pages

    The topic of slavery in the United States has always been controversial, as many people living in the South were supportive of it and many people living in the North were against it. Even though it was abolished by the Civil War before the start of the 20th century, there are still different views on the subject today. Written in 1853, the book Twelve Years a Slave is a first person account of what it was like for Solomon Northup to be taken captive from his free life in the North and sold to a plantation as a slave in the South, and his struggle to regain his freedom. Through writing about themes of namelessness, inhumanity, suffering, distrust, defiance, and the desire for freedom, Northup was able to expose the experiences and realities of slavery.

    Read More

  • Negro Spirituals

    1984 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slaves were not allowed to have a political voice, but singing was permitted. Slaves were free to sing while working in the fields, or while performing various duties about the plantation. White Southerners viewed songs with biblical themes as non-threatening. A spiritual-singing slave was perceived as joyous and content. However, the seemingly joyous" music of the Negro slave was that of an unhappy people" (Dubois).

    Read More

  • African-American Music

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...rgence, it was not recorded and recognized. The narrator and the authors from SSUS both express an emphasis on the importance of this music. The narrator felt so compelled by the music that he decided to bring the music to a different audience and environment. The authors in SSUS also voiced the importance of remembering and try to recreate the original African-American slave songs. Although both stories place a huge emphasis on these songs, the musicking experiences are quite different. The narrator provides a raw, detailed emotional response to the music. Meanwhile, the authors in SSUS choose to focus more on the music’s context and technicalities. Aside from their similarities and differences, these stories greatly show how music can help record a time in history, show different examples of musicking, and help show the importance of some of music’s original roots

    Read More

  • The History of Slave Music and its Impact on Modern Music

    2049 Words  | 5 Pages

    Slave music was divided into three groups; recreational, work songs and religious songs. A work song is some sought of music connected with specific work that is sung while conducting a task, timing or even appealing for protest. Work songs helped to organize groups of people into manageable units hence easing the burden of hard labor. Records of work song are ancient like the historical records; they vary depending...

    Read More

  • Essay On African American Theatre

    3109 Words  | 7 Pages

    Enslaved Africans have always brought music, dancing, and singing to the plantation life. It has always been apart of African-American culture to resemble theatre with traditions. Theatre traditions are a great way to be able to express yourself and given the history of African-Americans they always loved the rituals of music, dancing, and singing. It was a great way to be able to keep their mind off dealing with slavery and the lack of rights they were given within America at that time. In 1820 William B...

    Read More

  • Narrative Analysis Of Trailer In 12 Years A Slave

    2297 Words  | 5 Pages

    “A narrative begins with one situation and, through a series of linked transformations, end with a new situation that brings about the end of the narrative” (Gillespie, 2006, p. 81). The trailer for 12 Years a Slave does this. It begins with a Solomon getting captured and forced into slavery. He starts to accept his slavery in the beginning, but then as the trailer goes on, he changes his perspective and starts to regain hope and fight for his freedom. The events that knocked him down in the beginning start to make him stronger and start a fire in his heart that cannot be put out by the slave

    Read More

More about 12 Years A Slave Themes

Open Document