Solomon Northup's Autobiography, 12 Years A Slave

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.

After reading Solomon Northup's Twelve Years A Slave, I was overwhelmed with his experience. He was born a free man in New York in 1808. In 1841 he was tricked, captured, and sold into slavery in Washington, D.C. Throughout his book, Solomon goes into details describing his life as a slave, which validates our critique of slavery. As abolitionists, it is our duty to do something about slavery. Although, as abolitionists, we have a history of disagreements among us, it time to put a stop to our arguments and start fighting for something we all believe in - to abolish slavery. While the growing cotton economy has made slavery more attractive than ever before to most southern people, slavery has to be abolished based on these reasons:

In his true-life narrative "Twelve Years a Slave," Solomon Northup is a free man who is deceived into a situation that brings about his capture and ultimate misfortune to become a slave in the south. Solomon is a husband and father. Northup writes:

The film 12 Years a Slave, an adaptation of the 1853 autobiography by a slave named Solomon Northup, depicts his everyday life after his rights and freedoms are ripped away. Through the unpleasant slave auction scenes to the sickening slave punishments, 12 Years a Slave is a heartbreaking story that unfortunately conveys the harsh truth on the issues surrounding slavery. Consequently, during the film there are many themes and events that trigger different thoughts and reactions varying between viewers, and importantly a better understanding of Solomon Northup’s story and slavery itself.

Subjection is one of the darkest sections in American history, yet this motion picture gently catches the show in one slave's life and how he endeavors to cooperate sympathetic and gallantly with others notwithstanding his circumstance. It doesn't depend on excessively fierce and realistic scenes like numerous standard motion pictures with subjection or war topics (12 Years A Slave ringing a bell) to engage. Rather, this film depended on the dramatization, history, character advancement and the portrayal of how valuable flexibility is to

My choice of the movie 12 Years a Slave is an outstanding depiction of the lives of slaves in the 1840’s. This film follows the gruesome life of Solomon Northup. A black man born free in Saratoga, New York. Who was fooled, poisoned, and abducted by men who sold him into slavery. The movie is based on the book called “Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, From a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana.”

Solomon Northup was a free African American man from Minerva, New York. In the novel Twelve Years a Salve, Northup composed a narrative about his life as a free man, and also his life as a slave. In the year of 1814 Northup was kidnapped and taken deep South, to the rugged life of slavery. After 12 years of being thrown into the slavery against his will, he rightfully regained his freedom in January of 1853 all because he came in contact with an abolitionist from Canada, who sent letters to his family about his situation.

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.

Before the Reconstruction which took place after the Civil War, many slaves began to acquire their freedom by many things, including escaping plantations, buying their freedom, or being granted freedom from their former owners. Once slaves entered the North, they were able to finally be seen as a free African American. The thing that scared African Americans the most, frequently happened, being sent back to the South into slavery. 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup gives a recap of how his life, filled with joy and freedom one day, became a living nightmare the next. Northup, a self-taught, master violin player is fooled into traveling with “gentlemen” to share his talents for a small fortune. Leaving his family behind, he decides to go with the men and once he reaches New York City, the men convince Northup to travel to Washington D.C. Solomon soon began feeling sick and one day wakes up chained in a cell. Next thing he knows, he is being sold into slavery. He lives a life of a slave for twelve years until he is rescued by Henry B. Northup, who saves Solomon while he was working in the field. Once back in his own home, Solomon writes an autobiography of his experiences. After many decades, a historical movie retelling Solomon’s autobiography was released. Throughout the movie, many differences are present. For example, the wife of Solomon’s master was portrayed to be an evil woman in the movie, but in the book not so evil. Another example is while slaves did not fight back

thesis:Twelve Years a Slave, is a vivid memoir of Northup's captivity as free man in the slave ridden south. Solomon's experience was one of countless millions kidnapped, and sold into slavery. What makes his Solomon's story unique, is that he lived to tell the, horrors and atrocities of slavery.

Whites have long argued that slavery was good for slaves because it civilized them and that slaves were content to be held in bondage. But such is not the case, at least not according to those who were actually held in bondage. The accounts of slavery are greatly known by emancipated or run away slaves. One recorded account of slavery is by Solomon B. Northup’s autobiography, Twelve Years a Slave which was published in 1853.

The autobiography by Solomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave, tells the unforgiving story of the life of a slave in the mid-1800s. In the opening and closing of the book, Northup declares that his intention for writing his story was to give an unexaggerated, accurate representation of what he experienced during his twelve years of captivity. “My object is to give a candid and truthful statement of facts…” (Northup 1). He made it clear that he would make no embellishments to the story because he wanted the story to be an accurate representation of what slavery was like in the Red River area in Louisiana. In 2013, a movie that recreated Northup’s memoirs was released. As in the case of the vast majority of books which are made into a movie format for a broader cinematic audience, the screenwriters made embellishments to the detailing of events by the author. While the movie differs from the book with the exclusion of events and the changing of details in the plot, they were both able to portray the story effectively.

Throughout the history of slavery, there were undoubtedly many African Americans who suffered under its inequalities and strived to rid themselves from the system. However, within these numbers there were few who succeeded, and even fewer who recorded their journeys in the form of a book. The autobiographies, Twelve Years a Slave and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northup respectively, documented the lives of how their enslaved authors fought their way to freedom. The books portrayed not only the hardships of their lives as a slave but also how they achieved resistance against their masters and slavery itself. Even though they were both oppressed by racism and the system of slavery, Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northup both successfully fought their masters, aided fellow slaves, and obtained freedom.

Solomon’s Northup ‘12 Years a Slave’ is an autobiography book that narrates his life journey in regaining his freedom as a freeman. He emphasizes the concept of racism and freedom in his ‘12 Years a Slave’. This essay explores the research question “How does Northup portray the concept of racism and freedom in the novel ‘12 Years A Slave’?”. This essay begins with an introduction that outlines the background of racism and freedom in the novel and how the novel has provided detailed information that helps in analyzing. The essay continues with outlines of racism that occurs during 1840’s. The main analysis is included in the body; racism during Solomon’s abduction, how were they treated by his masters, what were his thoughts and

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.