12 Years A Slave

Persuaded by William Ford that killing Northup will only bring him the condemnation of his peers as well as financial loss, Tibeats hires Northup out to cut sugarcane in the "Big Cane Break" farther down the Red River. Around this time, Northup learns that Eliza has died of malnourishment and grief at the loss of her daughter (pp. 159-160). Soon afterwards, Tibeats sells Northup to Edwin Epps, a "repulsive and coarse" cotton planter whom Northup describes as being devoid of any redeeming qualities.(p. 162).

Edwin Epps will wake his slaves in the middle of the night and make them dance all night. Mr Epps’ slave are required to harvest cotton and the cotton harvested by each slave is weight. The ones that harvested the least amount of cotton will be punished by being whipped. Patsy a fellow slave who always picked the most cotton is favoured my Mr Epps, because of that Mistress Epps is jealous of Patsy and tried to get Mr Epps to sell Patsy. Patsy is also a victim of Edwin Epps’ constant rape. Patsy fell into despair and beg Northup to kill her as she couldn’t take her own life herself. Solomon Northup was once accused by Mr Epps for talking to Patsy and got chased by Mr Epps. A plague hit Mr Epps’ cotton plantation. Mr Epps’ sent all his slaves to Judge Turner until Mr Epps’ corps return. During the time at Judge Turner’s place, Northup was given the opportunity to play the violin and able to earn so coins. He kept his money somewhere in the forest.

The film 12 Years is an accurate and verifiable account of the common slave experience in the United States in the antebellum South. 12 Years a Slave is set in the mid to late 1800s and tells a true life story of the life of Solomon Northup a free Black man sold south into slavery. He was the son of an emancipated slave. Northup was from upstate New York, and was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Northup lived, worked, and was married in upstate New York, where his family resided. He was a multifaceted laborer and also an accomplished violin player. He was subjected to the cruelty for the next twelve years while he survived as the human property of several different slave masters, He continually struggled to survive and maintain some of his dignity. Then in the 12th year of the disheartening ordeal, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada he was was finally freed and is taken home. After being unsuccessful in prosecuting his kidnappers, Northup continues upriver to New York, where he is finally reunited with his family and where he meets his grandson, Solomon Northup Staunton, for the first time. In the end, Northup gives one final, powerful argument against the evils of the slave industry, pointing not to rhetoric or debates, but lifting up his own life story as a vivid commentary for viewers to consider. The main idea of the book was to share with the reader and give

Steve McQueen 's 12 Years a Slave stars Chiwetel Ejifor as Solomon Northup, a free black man in 1840s America. He makes his living as a fiddle player, and his wife is a teacher. He is shanghaied by a pair of nefarious white men, and soon finds himself on a ship headed to New Orleans where he is informed he will be called Platt and is sold into slavery by a businessman. As he toils away for the kindhearted but conflicted plantation owner Mr. Ford, who recognizes that Platt is both educated and an artist, he butts head with Ford. After they have a violent altercation, Ford sells him to Mr. Epps, an alcoholic who owns a cotton plantation. Even though Epps reads from the bible to his property, as he frequently refers to his slaves, he is himself not immune to sins. He has taken Patsey- his best cotton picker -- as his lover, and this doesn 't sit well at all with his wife, whose particular hatred for blacks and her jealousy fuels her many degrading actions toward Patsey. Solomon bides his time, attempts to preserve a modicum of self-respect, and waits for the chance to reclaim his rightful name and his family.

Slavery was ongoing for many years, which ruined many people’s lives. White people believed that African-Americans were inferior. The slaves were forced into labor, punished, and treated poorly. Slaves involvement took away the most important thing in human life, freedom. During this time there were many influential slaves. Solomon Northup, an African-American slave who was kidnapped and sold into slavery was one of them. He is one of the world’s most important historical figures. Solomon is known world wide for the movie and book based on his biography, 12 Years a Slave. By publishing the unbearable aspects of his life in captivity as a slave, Northup brought to light the sadism of American slavery. He raised awareness in audiences, and brought national attention to the injustices.

With Solomon showing how helpful he can truly be Ford treats him with respect and shows care for him. Ford changes everything and gives Solomon a sense of hope, Ford even gives Northup a fiddle. The moment of hope is soon crushed after the violent confrontation between him and Tibeats. Northup’s living and working conditions soon take a turn to the worse when he is sold to Edwin Epps, an impulsive and evil, slave owner. Solomon’s time on the cotton plantations is nothing he has ever seen before especially seeing the cruelty shown upon Patsey.

The main characters found through the book are: Solomon Northup, a free black man held captive as a slave; James H. Burch, cruel slave trader; William Ford, kind slave owner; John M. Tibeats, carpenter and slave owner; Edwin Epps, abusive slave owner; Mistress Epps, wife of Mr. Epps and cruel to Patsey; Patsey was a regularly abused slave; Bass, a white carpenter and slave abolitionist that helped Solomon; Henry B. Northup, the northern lawyer.

"In the movie 12 years a slave, directed by Steve McQueen, Solomon Northup is a freeman that lives peacefully with his family in New York earning a living as a fiddle player. His life is turned upside down as he is tricked and then illegally forced into slavery by two white cruel people. Solomon struggles every day to and is constantly being put under hardships and torture by his vituperative slave owners. In his twelfth year of slavery, Solomon is set free of slavery due to the help of a abolitionist he meets through slavery and friends back home. Slavery is universally considered to be wrong, unjust and unethical.

My first reason on why I disagree is, chewing gum is already a BIG distraction in school. For example if a student is trying to focus on the lesson while someone is smacking their gum, it becomes a distraction to the person and they won’t get the full lesson.

Through Solomon Northup’s story, viewers learn that socioeconomic status is no exception from racial realities. Solomon Northup was an educated, refined free black in the 1840s. His only mistake was thinking that being born free meant he was safe from the demonstration of white supremacy in America. Especially during this time, it didn't matter that he was educated, musically talented, and a family man, a person of color was threatened in a white, capitalist society and through the heartbreaking story of Solomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave shows this sad time in American

In the novel 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup we get his personal experience and telling of slavery and oppression during the antebellum time period; his story is a memoir of him as he lives his somber life and witnesses his fellow slave mates suffer through his same, and sometimes greater, nightmare. Throughout the book the reader gets detailed and brutal accounts of different slaves in the same plantation as Salmon such as Eliza Berry who is emotionally blackmailed with her children and the promise of freedom and is led to a deep depression after neither her nor her kids were granted their freedom and her children are sold away never to be seen by her again. As well as Patsey, a young and creative young lady who after being beaten and

Northup sets out to convince readers that his account of slavery is the truth. The detailed accounts that Solomon took to recreate his slave experience proves to be effective. Solomons story takes the aspect of being a free man, to enslavement in the South. Northup uses great parallelism in his narrative, often

Rembrandt Van Rijn’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer casts Rembrandt portrayed Aristotle in a quite specific role, as tutor to Alexander the Great, to whom, according to tradition, he had taught the art of war with the aid of quotations from Homer. That is why Aristotle's hand rests on a bust of Homer, the blind poet; that, too, is why he is wearing a chain on his chest with a medallion showing a likeness of Alexander the Great.

It was a hard scene to watch, and was hard to watch Edwin repeatedly whoop a naked Patsey and see her crying and in a lot of pain. It was even harder to see Edwin’s face and to see how much strength he was putting into whipping Patsey. The website U.S. History Scene said that, “Patsey’s story represented the brutality of slavery experienced by bondswomen” (Lieblich 1). The film portrayed the “brutality of slavery” in a historically accurate way by showing the slave owners beating their slaves and treating them terribly. “At the hands of white men, Northup made clear, black women were sexually and physically exploited with impunity during slavery. The normalization of sexual exploitation of slave women reflected the racist perceptions and stigmatization of black women” (Lieblich, 1). This shows the realism of the film during the scene where Edwin rapes Patsey. It was not an easy scene to watch, but it depicted the historical accuracy of the times by showing the “sexual exploitation of slave women” especially black slave women (Lieblich,

12 Years A Slave, is a film based on the narrative memoir of Solomon Northup; an African- American who was born a free man but was later drugged, beaten and kidnapped from his hometown, Saratoga Springs, New York, and taken to Washington D.C (1841). Awakened in a slave pen, Northup is “sadistically remade from a black free man in the North into a slave in the South” (Mollie Lieblich). He was sold to a slave master in Louisiana and worked on cotton and sugar plantations until a friend from the North comes to his rescue after twelve years.