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Solomon Northup's 12 Years A Slave

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“Like a herd of cattle, placed on a ship. Upon my back, I felt their whip! Ripping into my flesh, excruciating pain. Forced across the big water on a trip.” Solomon Northup must have had millions of thoughts and poems as such, mentioned above. Born as a New York State-free African-American man, Northup was kidnapped in Washington D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northup's journal, “12 Years a Slave”, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, cautiously retraced and validated the account and accomplished it to be accurate. It recounts the author’s life narrative as a free black man from the North who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South.
In 1841, Solomon Northup a free African-American man, worked as a violinist lived with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Solomon's marriage to Anne, his employment as a rafts man, a farmer, and a fiddle-player, and his seizure is shown in the first two chapters of the paperback.

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Promised one dollar for each day's services and three dollars for every show that he played, …show more content…

Burch, who brutally whips him for protesting that he is a free man. While in the slave pen, he makes the association of several other slaves, including Eliza, whose sad account he relates in detail. She was kept enslaved as a mistress by his master for nine years. She confesses to Northup in the slave pen: “I have done dishonorable things to survive … God forgive me”. Eliza knew she was eventually her master’s “property” to do with as he contented and so rather than resist his rape; she chose to surrender to his demands in the hope of an improved life for herself and her children. But when her master fell sick, she and her two children were sold to local slave traders by the master’s

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Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and free woman of color. Born in July 1808 in Minerva, New York, Solomon Northup grew up a free man, working as a farmer and violinist while having a family. He was lured south and kidnapped in 1841 and enslaved for more than a decade, enduring horribly violent conditions. Northup was freed in 1853 with help from colleagues and friends.

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The primary source of the New Orleans slave market in the reading is from Solomon Northup’s book about the time he spent in Louisiana after being kidnapped into slavery. Dehumanized is facilitated by status power like slaveholders, social connection. According to the history of slavery in Louisiana, every slave had information including name of individual, name of master, gender, race, age, family relationships including spouse and children. Moreover, selling information such as name of seller is an important piece for slaves. Circumstance in Louisiana is a whole different story in New York where Solomon Northup used to live and slavery had been abolished since 1829.

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In his narrative he talks about how he grew up in slavery being treated as a brute. He explains how his mistress at first had encouraged his reading and writing but eventually the slavery influence took over her heart and made it rock hard. The first day he came to the Hugh house he was treated as a human and was considered not a slave. When the moment of change came through her he was not allowed to read, and whenever he had a newspaper she would rip it out of his hands.

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Similarly, Douglass uses imagery to his advantage to describe the horror of witnessing the whipping of a fellow slave. Douglass recalls that he had “often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of [his] own aunt….The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped

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Diction such as “mangled” and phrases such as “lashed me till he had worn out his switches.” (pg. 68) are written in such a way that emotions form in the reader to feel the horrors of the act of slavery. Throughout his autobiography, Douglass contrasts the images of slaveholders and overseers with monsters and slaves with

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The Portrayal of Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave In his memoire Twelve Years a Slave, illegitimately enslaved Solomon Northup does not only depict his own deprivations in bondage, but also provides a deep insight into the slave trade, slaves’ working and living conditions, as well as religious beliefs of both enslaved people and their white masters in antebellum Louisiana. Northup’s narrative is a distinguished literary piece that exposes the injustice of the whole slaveholding system and its dehumanizing effect. It is not a secret that the agriculture dominated the economy of antebellum Louisiana (Louisiana: A History 183). Therefore the Southern planters needed relatively cheap workforce to cultivate

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Slavery was cruel and the most common phenomena that occurred during the 19th century and throughout time. Many of those who were slaves kept note of their life in memoirs of the suffering they endured and are referred to as Slave Narratives. Slave narratives are those who documented their life as a slave and one movie in particular “12 Years a Slave” narrates the life of Solomon Northup. Solomon Northup wasn’t always a slave throughout his life and was in actuality a well-spoken African American man until one day he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, just like many other Africans were. Northup was a slave for twelve years and endured the brutality and dehumanization that came with the slave system.

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The niece’s father, Dr. Flint, was nowhere near as kind to Harriet as her previous Miss Horniblow. In fact, when Harriet hit puberty Dr. Flint began to pursue an unrelenting aggressive and sexual attitude toward Harriet. This was not uncommon for slaves during the time period. Many slave masters assumed and expected their slaves to bend to their every whim, and often times because of fear the slaves submitted. Sexual relationships and oftentimes rape were not uncommon.

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Whether or not a slave narrative is able to persuade its readers of the inhumanities of slavery, the complexities within slave narratives and the discussions they create should not be overlooked. There is power within the act of writing one’s personal journeys and hardships throughout life, and that power gives former enslaved people the opportunity to express their own thoughts while making changes for future generations. Solomon Northup’s 12 Years A Slave gives a heart-wrenching depiction of what slavery was like in America. If the cruel images of the realities of slavery do not affect readers emotionally, then there is at least hope that the logical arguments raised throughout the novel can persuade those who are unwilling to see slavery

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Before the early 1840s, no one could truly comprehend the horrors and effects of enslavement. To the average southerner, it was a way of life. While in the north, it was more ambiguous in their view. The north’s view began to change when Frederick Douglass began to speak and write about enslavement and his personal experiences. He was one of the first enslaved people who displayed nuanced speech and intellectual thought.

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In Fredericks early years as a slave he remembered that this mistress was as he described a "warm and tender-hearted woman" a woman who opened her arms to him in the beginning, but through the system of slavery, she dramatically transformed into a violent and angry being. In another speech, Douglass told the story of a slave named Henny who was the main victim of his master’s

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But, he then goes to show how her transformation came to be of a true mistress and how that kind of foolish power corrupted her. She was not a bad person, but being able to control over another human being transformed her from an angel into a demon. Douglass saw the change in her how “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (38). This just shows how slavery affects not just the slave but the slave owners as well. This vicious cycle desecrates and destroys everyone involved.

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In regards to the abolitionist movement, Solomon Northup’s slave narrative was particularly important because it revealed the inhumane treatment, such as the brutal beatings done by masters and overseers, the sexual use of slave women and the merciless separation of families, and in his personal case the abuse of the Fugitive Slave

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The fact that Solomon’s text is closely based on his real-life maltreatments perhaps has an even more lasting effect on its readers as they endure the written abuse of Patsy. In Patsy’s case, she wasn’t whipped to almost death for plain entertainment, she was whipped because of her forced sexual relations with her master that irritated her master’s mistress. This intense scene not only exhibits the power and abuse that a master has over his “property,” but it also shows a lack of compassion from both male and female slave owners. This demonstrates that the master’s wife, who does not have the rights of the men in her country and whose status is certainly below her husband, finds pleasure and no remorse in taking her frustrations out on Patsy. She views Patsy as competition and since Patsy is her husband’s property, she is allowed to decide what to do with Patsy.

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