Twelve Years A Slave By Solomon Northrup

The story by Solomon Northrup, as told to David Wilson, titled "Twelve Years A Slave" is considered by many to be one of the most important and influential books throughout the history of America. The work was published about eight years before the Civil War, and at its first release, sold over 30,000 copies. Obviously this book has been adapted into film in recent years, with the Oscar-winning picture of the same name receiving rave reviews. The book, however, follows the life of Northrup as he was born a freeman in the state of New York, then leading a sometimes harrowing life with many intriguing factors along the way. This narrative is important because of its obvious historical value, as well as the impact it would have throughout the

Essentially, the entire "12 Years a Slave" book can be summed up like this. Solomon Northrup, who was the son of a freed slave in the state of New York, had lived, worked, and gotten married in his native state. He had the rest of his family around him, and he had quite a contented living situation with his life heading in what he believed to be the right direction. He additionally possessed the skills of a utility man, able to work seamlessly on one job to the next, and he had experience playing the violin. That's the reason that in 1841, two con men approached him with the offer of playing the fiddle in a distant circus. He couldn’t refuse the deal, and followed them to Washington, D.C., which would retrospectively become one of the worst mistakes of his life. The reason for this, is because from there, he would get drugged, kidnapped, and sold into the slave industry when he came to in the Red River region of

One of my favorite quotes that resonates from this story "What difference is there in the color of the soul?" I think that this is an inspiring quote that not only challenges the standards of two hundred years ago, but the modern, present day as well. Many people throughout the world are different in the fact that they share dissimilar skin color or skin tones. One might be darker than the other, one might be lighter, or vice versa; for some reason, some discriminative individuals seem to focus exclusively on the petty differences that exist between us. They see a man with a darker skin color, and they feel that that is a barrier that puts the other man below him. What Solomon is trying to portray here is, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Every single man on Earth possesses a soul that contains both good and bad qualities, and he believes that we should focus our judgment on the morality and character of our fellow man, not their physical differences. Another quote from the story that has stuck in my mind is the following quip from Solomon: "The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them, has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering—listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave—beholding him writhing beneath the merciless