ipl-logo

12 Years A Slave Critique

849 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: African american history argumnet

“12 years a slave”, by Steve McQueen is a movie that is filled with intriguing events according to the majority of its watchers. It got a rating score of 8.2 out of 10. Basically, this movie is derived from a real story that portrays a dark awful period of Solomon Northup’s life, the free African –American who was abducted in Washington .DC in 1841 and sold into slavery for 12 years. But although some people don’t have the tendency to watch such film that is filled with dirty violence scenes such as insulting, torturing and killing, I think that it is successful in delivering a significant message to the whole world that clarifies what is the real meaning of slavery. It is depriving a person from being a person. Northup is a character that plays an important role in showing the amount of suffer that the writer experienced when he was a slave. At the beginning, he was a free man living a quit peaceful life with his wife Anne Hampton and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Until two men named Brown and Hamilton trick him by …show more content…

the idea and the character of the film was developed after the pair work of Steve McQueen and John Ridley who was interested in making the film about “The slave era in America”. The two start working on developing the idea until Ridley read the book of Northup “12 years a slave”, where he got stunned and start drawing the character of the move hero according to the story. And as a matter of fact, the character has to be like that, because a person that can overcome all this difficulties has to be in the personality shown in the

Show More
Related
947 Words | 4 Pages

He starts to see the hypocrisy of the patriots fighting for freedom, the racial bias others are more than willing to impose on his race, and runs away from it all to no longer be constrained into slavery. His character changes from the naive little boy learning other languages to a young adult realizing how inhumane slavery is regardless of their situation. The story does have its strengths and weaknesses which can take away from the entire novel or give an interest to

Read More
1572 Words | 7 Pages

After the plantation revolution in the 1600s, slavery became a horrible institution driven by the mass production of goods by white slave-owners who were looking to succeed economically. Slaves were treated as disposable commodities and lived hard lives under the brutal hand of their slave-owners. By the 1800s, slavery was natural and very common in the south, and was justified because African Americans were seen as an inferior race who were uneducated and incapable of engaging in society. Since slaves had no political power, especially in the south, they could not fight for their freedom; most were uneducated, so they could not write their accounts down; and even when slaves successfully escaped north, they had a hard time communicating with

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

To What Extent Were Southern Slaveholders Justified in Comparing Slavery in Favorable Terms to Northern Factory? Compared to slavery, working in a factory seemed much greater and simpler than working for someone without getting paid. When you think about it, is it actually better than slavery? Families would force their own children to work in factories to make money to support their own family. In 1819, people, starting at the age of 9, had to start working in factories (Doc 15).

Read More
1377 Words | 6 Pages

In Northup’s narrative, he imparts the emotions of desperation he felt when discovering Bass was leaving the plantation. Bass was the first white man to offer him kindness in a decade. He treated Northup like a human being and risked his own life to discreetly send letters to Northup’s old friends. In his letter, Bass asked for papers that would free Northup (Northup 270-277). Northup defies any expectations of an attempt at escape by his own measures and instead confides in a sympathetic white man to assist in his freeing.

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

Slavery Divorce is hell! Often times the pair has been unhappy for years and tried many ways to save the marriage so the family can remain intact, especially when there are children. The Southern States began to divorce the United States when South Carolina seceded after Lincoln was elected President in 1860. Like a family split into by divorce, the United States soon became divided into two separate units (the United States or the Union and the Confederacy) and saw more bloodshed and lives lost than it had before or would ever since the 1860s.

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

Did you know that "All of England's North American colonies allowed slavery and in he late 1700s"? Slavery had disappeared in England and in the Mid-Atlantic colonies by the end of the 1700s. Enslavement of the Africans was still going on, even though it had disappeared in England and in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. At the end of the Civil War enslavement of the Africans had finished. The way slavery was practiced in England, in the Mid-Atlantic colonies, and in the southern colonies was similar and different in many ways.

Read More
909 Words | 4 Pages

In the years 1777 to 1865, the African American people, also known as Blacks, were used as slaves for the white men of America. Eventually, enslavement was abolished and was outlawed, as it is today. According to the map, The Abolition of Slavery, slavery in the northern states was still around during the years 1777 to around 1787. The New England states of Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut got rid of slavery first, followed by the Midwest states and the Mid-Atlantic states.

Read More
1006 Words | 5 Pages

In order to undermine their ability to rebel, legislators deprived slaves of their ability to be literate. The South Carolina Act of 1740, a reaction to the Stono Rebellion, was the first act that limited slaves’ literacy. The Virginia Revised Code of 1819 states that any meetings or schools that teach slaves reading and/or writing “shall be deemed and considered an unlawful assembly” (“Original Documents”). Literacy of slaves was limited in order to take away their sense of possibility and prevent them from advocating for their freedom and equal treatment.

Read More
1095 Words | 5 Pages

The writer does not hide his contempt for those slaveholders characterized as “blood-seeking wretches.” (Twelve Years a Slave 125) Such slaveholders as Tibeats and Edwin Epps, another ruthless plantation owner, who buys Solomon from Mr. Williams, fall exactly into such a category. Nonetheless, soon Northup admits that his life on Epp’s plantation proves to be even worse than working with Tibeats. The writer notes that Epps never spares his whip to extract obedience from the “niggers.” Moreover, “being fond of the bottle” and various violent amusements, Epps repeatedly makes his slaves dance for him in the middle of the night or lashes them around his yard with his whip “just for the pleasure of hearing them screech and scream.”

Read More
680 Words | 3 Pages

In addition to the lack of education, there is also a great deal of ignorance in our communities when recognizing those who may be forced into sexual exploitation. It is not their fault but in a sense it is ours for the lack of involvement. We must pay our communities more attention and speak out for the voiceless, it is our job to help prevent this horrific crime from happening to these innocent women and children. The lack of involvement is also one of the largest epidemics on the widespread of Human Trafficking. For example, Theresa Flores was a 15 year old teenager, just like any other teenager, loved track, enjoyed school, and was an exceptional student, so most would assume, but what you didn’t know about her is she had been forced into a lifestyle unimaginable.

Read More
716 Words | 3 Pages

“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.

Read More
1489 Words | 6 Pages

It tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in New York. Solomon is abducted and spends the next 12 years working as a slave. In this essay I will be talking about the similarities and differences between the text, as well as the significance of the text, the audience, purpose and stylistic and formal features (filmic devices). First of all, the similarities between the two films. There are a number of components that are similar.

Read More
1731 Words | 7 Pages

In the film 12 Years a Slave the editor, Joe Walker, makes use of a couple of techniques and styles that adds to the film in its own way. Long shots – Joe kept the long shots as long as he thought was necessary to add to the subject matter and the feeling he wanted to bind with the story. At the end of the film there’s this extremely long shot where Solomon is practically staring at the camera for about a minute and a half. The timing of that shot is so perfect because it’s not too short so you don’t have enough time to think about what just happened or too much time to overthink the situation. Closer to the end of the shot he lets the sound fade slowly and rapidly gives you a wakeup call when the next shot starts off where Solomon and the rest of the slaves are busy working in the field.

Read More
233 Words | 1 Pages

I watched “12 Years a Slave” on January 1st with Annalisse and Conrad. We chose to watch this movie because it was the most recent film between the other choices and we seemed most interested in it. “12 Years a Slave” is a film showing us the life of a man, named Solomon Northup. Solomon was a free black man who lived in upstate New York with his wife and two children around 1841. Solomon was offer a job by two men, Hamilton and Brown, to work in Washington D.C as a violinist.

Read More
1843 Words | 8 Pages

“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”: Annotated Bibliography Burnham, Michelle. “Loopholes of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs ' Slave Narrative and the Critique of Agency in Foucault.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 49.2 (1993): 53-73. Print. In the article Burnham analyzes the loopholes of resistance and retreat not only in Harriet Jacobs ' Slave Narrative but also compares those elements and components to those used in the work of Foucault showing the philosophic background in the writing.

Read More

More about 12 Years A Slave Critique

Related Topics

Open Document