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12 Years A Slave By Solomon Northup

536 Words3 Pages

Life Without Freedom The film 12 Years a Slave written by Solomon Northup shows the heartbreak, pain, and suffering during the many years of slavery. It shows how bad the slaves were treated. They were treated as if they were not people, and like they did not deserve a normal life like the white folk. The blacks were stripped from their homes, their families, and most of all, their rights as humans. Many blacks during this time period were born into slavery, and knew no other way of life than to be a slave. The other majority of black folk were free and treated as everyone else, until they would be taken by the whites, only to be put to work for the rest of their lives. Slavery was a big role in history, it showed us that every person, no …show more content…

Solomon was a free black man at the beginning of his life. He had a beautiful family, a big house, and a sense of worth of belonging to his community. He never thought he would be sold into slavery after a night of fun with new friends. The white people who bought slaves did not care about taking mothers away from their children, brothers away from sisters, and certainly not free blacks away from living free lives. The masters, or owners of slaves, were only in it for the money and control. In the movie, there were some nice masters that had empathy for the slaves, while the other masters only saw them as dollar signs. The slaves during this time period suffered many hardships and did not get the freedom they deserved. Many blacks lived their whole life as slaves, and died not getting to know what being free felt like. After watching the movie 12 Years a Slave, I feel as if I can empathize with the blacks during the slave trade time period. I always believed that slavery was a horrible thing to go through, and watching this it reminded me of how strongly I felt about having equality for everybody. I also felt glad knowing that there were many white people trying to help slaves live free

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Solomon Northrup Solomon northup was an African farmer and musician and was taken hostage and sold into slavery in 1841. He was born in 1808, grew up as a farmer and a violinist. Soloman Northrup enlightened people on slaves who never gave up, and what it was like to be a slave through his book 12 years a slave (Solomon) Soloman Northrups text 12 years a slave impacted many people.

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In the years prior to the Civil War, countless black Americans found themselves forcibly bound by the chains of slavery and barred from basic human rights. As identities were stripped by slaveholders denying freedom and equality, slaves were imposed with the burdens of captivity and its inherent evils. As freed people, both Frederick Douglass in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” and Solomon Northup in “12 Years a Slave” detail the true horrors, hypocrisy, and abuse they experienced while enslaved. Douglass and Northup effectively communicate and depict the slave system to a sympathetic anti-slavery audience using tone, imagery, and irony to enhance readers’ impressions and appeal to their pathos.

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“The institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one.” As Solomon Northup stated in twelve years as a slave the idea of slavery is an injustice as its very existence strips humans of their inherent rights. The two famous narratives, Twelve year a slave by Solomon Northup and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass both demonstrate through their experiences as slaves just how damaging slavery is. Slavery in America started in the 1600s and it was a method of legally enslaving human beings mainly those of color to do hard labor. Most slaves, during these times, were born into slavery like Douglass.

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