Mariah Tamayo
Northup, Solomon, and Sue L. Eakin. Twelve Years a Slave.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1968. Print. This narrative depicted the image of a dream or more of a nightmare that one could not wake up from. Solomon Northup, a former victim of false enslavement, presents a very detailed and vivid picture with his autobiography to portray his experience in slavery and injustice. Although there were many who speculated Northup’s book, Twelve Years a Slave, and believed that it was exaggerated, or made up, Northup presented a well organized, specific, and descriptive insight of how horrid and injustice the once a common practice, slavery, was towards him and others in history. As if the public records and trial that arouse from this
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Northup and his wife had built a stable life for themselves and their children in Saratoga Springs, New York, by agriculture and jobs related to their own unique talent such as Northup’s violin playing and his wife’s cooking skills. He had built relationships with many people where he lived, including white men who he later reaches out to towards the end of the book. Northup being a workingman, who prospers to always do better, is offered a job in Washington D.C. by two men who later end up betraying him and being the reason why Northup ends up being a slave for twelve years. Along his journey, Northup meets many different slaves who were born slaves and others whom were in the same predicament as he was by being freemen who were stripped of their identity and enslaved. Northup was told early on by one of his many masters, to never tell anyone who he was or it would lead him to his death. He was sold and became property of many different slave owners. Northup experienced and witnessed beatings, cruelty, death, close death experiences, hunger, and terrible labor. After twelve years of being separated from his family and living in these terrible conditions as a slave, Northup gets in contact with his friends from the North with a letter delivered to them by a Canadian, and is rescued. Shortly after, Northup takes this event to …show more content…
Overall I received a vivid insight of slavery and the hardship that comes with it. I can say I was not the only one who imagined everything Northup described because this was later turned into a movie, therefore producers and directors must have seen the imagery given. I was emotionally drawn to Northup’s experience and now have a better understanding of the works of slavery. To say anything about Northup’s account being false or exaggerated is inhumane because no one could share an experience such as this if it was not the
Though slightly frivolous to mention merely because of its obviousness but still notably, all the slaves came from the Southern states including and not limited to Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, South Carolina, and Arkansas. Economically, the United States’ main cash crops—tobacco, rice, sugarcane, and cotton—were cultivated by the slaves who the rich Southerners heavily depended upon. From this perspective establishes a degree of understanding about the unwillingness to abolish slavery and contributes to the reality of the clear division between the agriculturally based South and industrially based North. Having watched the film, I wished the Northern people were more aware of the abuses and dehumanization of the slaves though the saddening reality is that the truth of the slaves’ conditions couldn’t be revealed till much later on because the fear of retaliation and prosecution of the slave owners and white people was very much present. That the slaves’ mistreatment would be considered repulsive and repugnant to the Quakers and abolitionists is made evident the narratives of the slaves read by the different former slaves who elucidated the countless
The book 12 Years a Slave is an autobiography that chronicles the life of Solomon Northup. Northup was born free in the New York State but at the age of 33 is drugged, kidnapped and forced into slavery for 12 years. Northup was kidnapped during a time when the nation was split over slavery. In the North many African Americans were born free while in the South, African Americans were sold, kidnapped, or born into slavery. Northup was raised free but forced into slavery for 12 years were he suffered brutal beatings and torture at the hands of a cruel slave owner.
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
1. The insight that each of these sources offers into slave life in the antebellum South is how slaves lived, worked, and were treated by their masters. The narratives talk about their nature of work, culture, and family in their passages. For example, in Solomon Northup 's passage he describes how he worked in the cotton field. Northup said that "An ordinary day 's work is considered two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings less quantity than that," (214). Northup explains how much cotton slaves had to bring from the cotton field and if a slave brought less or more weight than their previous weight ins then the slave is whipped because they were either slacking or have no been working to their
Solomon Northup was one of the few that escaped the grasps of slavery. He wrote his own book, 12 Years a Slave, and even had a movie crea...
Although it was very graphic it explained the horrific mistreatment of the slaves that were packed in so tightly they couldn’t even move on their sides and describing it as a slaughterhouse. I found it interesting how in previous history textbooks I had read in high school the conditions of the transportation of slaves had not been explained in such a gruesome way. It was useful in trying to comprehend the unspeakable living conditions in which the slaves had to live
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
The author presented the information in a very solid way and sectioned it out very well. I understood what he was trying to explain. It was somewhat a long book but very much full of knowledge and history that in spirit is still alive today. We may not have slavery like it was then, but we still deal with racism and prejudice daily.
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:
“Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State-and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years—it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public.” Solomon North uttered these words shortly after being rescued from the wrongful capture and years of slavery. North was born a freeman, July 1808 in New York. He lived for thirty-four years in freedom, enjoying lives daily blessings. However, this happiness was cut short in 1841 when he was captured and sold into slavery. In the document, Twelve Years a Slave,
When discussing the topic of slavery oftentimes the reality of the trauma which took place is not fully understood due to the audience’s inability to relate. However, the most effectual means for one to convey the true extent of oppression is through accurate and compelling firsthand descriptions. Frederick Douglass thoroughly accomplishes this by transparently exposing his personal experience as a slave in his book titled “Narrative.” From being separated from his mother at birth to outsmarting his slave master into allowing him to teach fellow slaves to read, Douglass’ perspective provides an in depth look into life as a slave. Certainly, anyone with any knowledge of American slavery is familiar with the aspect of physical abuse because it
Since Northup wrote this book himself, it was able to provide readers with the truth and the experiences of living as a slave in the South. The good experiences written about by Northup seemed to be few and far between in the story, but the moments were big. In the beginning of the story, he talked about being with his family and the experience of being a free black man in the North. Once his freedom and family were taken from him, the next good experience he spoke of was when he met friends, either on the boat rides or on the plantations. These friends, although he was once free and most of them were not, had many things in common with Northup, and they all had similar views on slavery. A third positive experience that Solomon wrote about was when the officials came to Ebbs’ plantation to take him back North to freedom, which Ebbs could not believe. Although Ebbs wasn’t happy about it, Solomon was excited to go back to the North and his family. Being reunited with his family after ...
Deviating from his typically autobiographical and abolitionist literatures, Frederick Douglass pens his first work of fiction, “The Heroic Slave,” the imagined backstory of famed ex-slave Madison Washington, best known for his leadership in a slave rebellion aboard about the slave ship Creole. An interesting plot and Douglass’ word choice provide a powerful portrait of slavery and the people affected by it.
Northup, Solomon, Sue L. Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. Twelve years a slave. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Print.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.