essay about 12 years a slave

Film “12 Years a Slave” Essay

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Introduction

Critics’ view, works cited.

12 Years a Slave is a dramatic chef-d’oeuvre film that highlights the brutal experiences that slaves underwent in the hands of their masters in the Southern America. Undoubtedly, the movie reinvigorates the debate on the historical significance of slavery in the contemporary United States. Critics shift the debate from the historical significance of slavery in the United States to the correctness of the slavery events portrayed in the film.

Critics agree that the film plays a critical role in highlighting the plight of slaves in the South; however, they accuse Steve McQueen, the movie’s director, of portraying a politically correct version of the events surrounding slavery as portrayed in the movie. Critics argue that slaves in the antebellum South were highly contented with their lives as opposed to McQueen’s version in the film, 12 Years a Slave.

The film reinvigorates the debate on the historical significance of slavery in the United States by pitting critics against the neo-slave narrative partisans. This paper explores the critics’ arguments on the film coupled with highlighting what the movie has to teach about slavery and the people caught in it.

As aforementioned, critics argue that the film, 12 Years a Slave, is a critical historical piece that highlights the plight of slaves in the antebellum South. However, whilst slavery cannot be accepted or justified, critics argue that McQueen chose to highlight the politically correct aspects of slavery in America.

Bowman rues, “If ever in slavery’s 250-year history in North America there were a kind master or a contented slave, as in the nature of things there must have been, here and there, we may be sure that Mr. McQueen does not want us to hear about it” (par. 5). This claim insinuates that the movie only focuses on the presumably brutal side of slavery.

Ostensibly, Bowman adumbrates that perhaps slaves were better of in their status, as opposed to the conventional assumption that they craved freedom. This aspect reinvigorates the debate on whether slaves were contended in their status or they really wanted any form of emancipation. Interestingly, Bowman’s views are common in debates surrounding the historical significance of slavery in the US.

Most white supremacist groups think that slaves enjoyed their time in slavery as they lived better lives as compared to some indigenous Americans at the time. Cooper supports these views by noting that slaves were treated as “properties”, and thus they were taken care of for maximum utility (par. 9). In other words, the objective of slave masters was to get maximum returns from slaves in terms of output in the plantations.

Therefore, for the slaves to function optimally, they had to be in good health, which could only be necessitated via good meals. Cooper posits, “…many slaves actually had a higher standard of living than many poor whites… the slave’s diet of corn, pork, molasses, and greens was coarse and lacked variety, but it was better than that of many English farm laborers…” (par. 16).

Vincent adds, “A slave’s long workday was no longer than that of many Northern industrial and agricultural laborers” (par. 17). Such arguments reinvigorate the debate on whether the abolishment of slavery was necessary. Therefore, critics like Cooper question the authenticity of scenes in the film where slaves are killed or mistreated.

Particularly, critics validate their line of thinking by claiming that most slaves continued serving their masters even after the famous emancipation. Therefore, given the issues raised by these two critics, the debate on the historical significance of slavery in the United States rages on. However, not all critics see the film as a historical fallacy seeking to propagate political correctness.

In her masterpiece article, 12 Years a Slave as a Neo-Slave Narrative, Stephanie Li digresses from the savage attack on the movie to explore a different perspective of understanding slavery. She posits, “ 12 Years a Slave is best understood through…neo-slave narrative…residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” (Li 326). From this perceptive, one can understand McQueen’s motives.

For instance, critics question the motive behind Patsey’s request to be killed. In the eyes of the critics, slaves could not make such a request because they were living a contented live. However, from the neo-slave narrative perspective, one appreciates Patsey’s request because to her, death was the only way of achieving ultimate freedom (Salamishah 356).

Therefore, critics raise the question of ‘if’ slaves wanted freedom, but neo-slave narratives answer the question ‘why’ slaves wanted it. In this light, the movie reinvigorates the debate on the historical significance of slavery in the United States by pitting critics and neo-slaver narrative enthusiasts against each other. This debate is healthy as it creates awareness of the issue of slavery in the US.

Ernest notes that 12 Years a Slave “is a film that calls, vividly, for its proper context, the historical awareness and understanding by which its representation of slavery might be justly valued” (367). Such perception and debates will ultimately create the much-needed awareness on the historical significance of slavery in the United States. Individuals will analyze arguments and counterarguments, and thus clear the conspiracy theories that have bedeviled the issue of slavery in the antebellum South.

The film’s teaching on slavery and people caught up in it

The movie underscores the suffering and consequences of slavery in the United States in the 17 th and 18 th centuries. Slavery was an insult to humanity and this aspect stands out conspicuously throughout the film. Apparently, the movie makes it clear that some free people living in the United States became victims of slavery due to their races.

For instance, before his capture, Solomon Northup was a free man living happily with his family in Saratoga Springs. Slavery entailed untold brutality and individuals were used as tools of production without pay. Slaves were dehumanized at every opportunity.

For instance, in one scene, Edwin Epps rapes Patsey indiscriminately and this act is dehumanizing. In another scene, Patsey is beaten senselessly until flesh falls from her back. In yet another scene, Northup almost dies in the hands of Tibeats and his friends. The people caught up in slavery were reduced to mere objects to fulfill human vacuity. From all perspectives, slavery is unjustifiable as it is an affront to human dignity.

The film, 12 Years a Slave, is an austere reminder of the woes and suffering of slaves in the antebellum South. The movie reinvigorates the debate on the historical significance of slavery in the United States by pitting critics against neo-slave narrative partisans against each other as each side endeavors to validate its arguments.

Critics hold that slaves did not want freedom, while neo-slave narrators maintain that the slaves’ need for emancipation was absolute. The film teaches that slavery was a dehumanizing venture and those caught up in it were accursed.

Bowman, James. “Propaganda is not ‘Reality’ or ‘Truth’: 12 Years a Slave deserved Better.” The Spectator. 2013. Web.

Cooper, Vincent. “12 Years a Slave: Two and a half hours of boredom.” The Commentator 2014. Web.

Earnest, John. “(Re) Mediated History: 12 Years a Slave.” American Literary History 26.2 (2014): 367-373. Print.

Li, Stephanie. “12 Years a Slave as a Neo-Slave Narrative.” American Literary History 26.2 (2014): 326-331. Print.

Salamishah, Tillet. “I Got No Comfort in This Life: The Increasing Importance of Patsey In 12 Years a Slave.” American Literary History 26.2 (2014): 354-361. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 22). Film "12 Years a Slave". https://ivypanda.com/essays/film-12-years-a-slave/

"Film "12 Years a Slave"." IvyPanda , 22 June 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/film-12-years-a-slave/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Film "12 Years a Slave"'. 22 June.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Film "12 Years a Slave"." June 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/film-12-years-a-slave/.

1. IvyPanda . "Film "12 Years a Slave"." June 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/film-12-years-a-slave/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Film "12 Years a Slave"." June 22, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/film-12-years-a-slave/.

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12 Years a Slave: The Analysis of the Film

Introduction, historical accuracy, demographic, negative/positive aspects, works cited.

Reading history books is one way of learning about the past. However, many individuals need visual stimulation to be able to connect with a situation, person, or event that happened hundreds of years ago. Thus, movies based on memoirs or biographies are excellent ways for people to see and comprehend both physically and emotionally something that is challenging to imagine without the audio and video component. However, in order for the historical connotation to be truthful and close to reality, directors have to pay close attention to the source of information. On the other hand, the current trends create an environment in which the movie has to be honest yet captivating, so directors may add different effects or characters without changing the core of the story. An example of a movie that gives the audience the opportunity to percept history is 12 Years a Slave.

Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years of Slave is based on a memoir. The movie portrays the story of Solomon Northup, who is kidnapped as a free African-American living in New York (McQueen). He worked as a musician before two men offered him a job in another state. However, he ends up in a slave pen without anyone believing him about his status as a free man. Solomon is shipped to New Orleans before enduring torture and being sold again to another plantation owner. Edwin Epps is much more ruthless, making Solomon’s life an everyday struggle for survival. A Canadian worker who is a temporary worker at the plantation agrees to send a letter written by Northup to New York. Sometime later, the sheriff and two men, one of which was Solomon’s friend, arrive with the intention to take him home. Solomon reunites with his family and lives as a free man again, this time for the rest of his life. The movie highlights the nuances of slavery, racism, discrimination, and segregation in the 19th-century South.

Why 12 Years a Slave?

The movie was chosen because of the desire to understand the concept of slavery in the US from the perspective of a person who described his personal experiences. The contrast between being a free man and a property that can be sold or bought was the main reason why this particular film appeared to be most complex from a historical, social, and phycological perspective. Thus, 12 Years of Slavery was picked due to the topic that it touches upon, the events that it described, and the story behind the initial source.

The movie is historically accurate due to the fact that it was written by Solomon Northup himself, an African-American man who describes personal experiences in his memoirs. However, researchers point out that certain moments were slightly altered or enhanced to give the film a more contemporary overview as a way to create an emotional response from the viewers (Horton). However, the main events, the characters, and the overall storyline are close to the original book, which makes the film relatively accurate in terms of historical connotation. This enhances the movie because the audience can receive a first-hand experience of the horrendous circumstances which caused the book to be written. Furthermore, individuals who watch movies about such difficult topics as slavery may not make a link between what is shown on the screen and what actually happened. In the context of 12 Years a Slave , such conclusions are impossible to occur due to the reality factor.

The movie appeals to a large demographic since it is excellent from two perspectives: historical and artistic. People who would like to learn about US history can watch it to see the state of the country in the 19 th century. On the other hand, those who enjoy good cinema go through an emotional roller-coaster even without being interested in the background. Either way, it can be an exceptional experience that cannot leave audience members indifferent.

Based on personal objective and subjective overviews, the film is undoubtedly exceptional. The complex story, the cast, music, decorations, costumes, and the ambiguous feeling left after watching it are among the things that have to be mentioned in regard to some of the best aspects of the movie. In terms of factors to dislike, there is a lack of resistance to the portrayal in contrast with the original novel. Perhaps, the director chose to avoid such emphasis on slave resistance to create an atmosphere of desperation and hopelessness to highlight the main character’s agony, which is an understandable omission from an artistic viewpoint. The film could have been improved if more screen time had been used to show the main character’s life before slavery. It would have emphasized the contrast between freedom and enslavement and highlighted the emotionally challenging shift from being a human to being treated like property. The movie itself also featured the surprising aspect of masters preventing slaves from being knowledgeable, literary, and intelligent when it comes to writing and reading. Although, it is clear that this was done because of the relationship between literacy and freedom. Still, this was a surprising factor that I had not paid attention to before watching the film.

12 Years a Slave is an excellent story that portrays terrible things. It is important to highlight the historical accuracy of the movie, which did not take away from the movie’s captivating, emotional, and heartbreaking nature. The movie is educational without being overly documentary-like, which is a remarkable effect that the director managed to achieve. Overall, I am pleased with the choice to analyze this movie since I had the opportunity to learn more about history while watching an interesting, captivating, dramatic, yet beautiful piece of art.

Horton, Dana Renee. “‘You Will Sell the Negress!”: Using the Post-Neo-Slave Narrative to Revise Representations of Women in Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-Present) , vol. 17, no. 2, 2018.

McQueen, Steve, director. 12 Years a Slave . Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2013.

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1. StudyCorgi . "12 Years a Slave: The Analysis of the Film." February 15, 2023. https://studycorgi.com/12-years-a-slave-the-analysis-of-the-film/.

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StudyCorgi . "12 Years a Slave: The Analysis of the Film." February 15, 2023. https://studycorgi.com/12-years-a-slave-the-analysis-of-the-film/.

StudyCorgi . 2023. "12 Years a Slave: The Analysis of the Film." February 15, 2023. https://studycorgi.com/12-years-a-slave-the-analysis-of-the-film/.

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12 Years a Slave

SUBJECTS — U.S./1812 – 1865; Literature/U.S. (Slave Narrative); Biography; Diversity/African-American;

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING — Human Rights;

MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS — Respect.

AGE: 15+; MPAA Rating — R for violence/cruelty, some nudity, and brief sexuality;

Drama; 2013, 2 hrs. 14 minutes; Color. Available from Amazon.com .

Note to Teachers:

While TWM has created a useful Learning Guide for this film, it is very long for classroom use. As an alternative, teachers can assign the film for viewing at home and require students to fill out TWM’s Movie Worksheet for 12 Years a Slave . Reviewing responses to the worksheet can be a classroom activity. Watching the film at home can be supplemented with a shorter documentary, Unchained Memories (one hour, 15 minutes) in which actors read from interviews with the last generation of former slaves.

Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM’s Guide:

THE BEST OF TWM

One of the Best!   This movie is on TWM’s short list of the best movies to supplement classes in United States History, High School Level.

Benefits of the Movie Parenting Points Selected Awards & Cast Helpful Background

Using the Movie in the Classroom Discussion Questions Social-Emotional Learning Moral-Ethical Emphasis

Assignments and Projects CCSS Anchor Standards Bridges to Reading Links to the Internet Bibliography

MOVIE WORKSHEETS & STUDENT HANDOUTS

TWM’s Movie Worksheet for 12 Years a Slave .

DESCRIPTION

This movie is a cinematic representation of the best selling slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in upstate New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery. The film shows the life of a slave in the American South primarily on two plantations: one governed by a relatively benevolent master and the other subject to a brutal tyrant. They also expose the particularly hard lot of slave women and the operation of the slave trade. The movie is an excellent resource for 12th grade and college classes in U.S. History and for ELA units on the slave narrative genre.

SELECTED AWARDS & CAST

Selected Awards: 2014 Academy Awards: Best Picture of the Year; and numerous other awards.

Featured Actors: Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup; Kelsey Scott as Anne Northup; Adepero Oduye as Eliza; Benedict Cumberbatch as Ford; Liza J. Bennett as Mistress Ford; J.D. Evermore as Chapin; Paul Dano as Tibeats; Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps; Sarah Paulson as Mistress Epps; Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey; Alfre Woodard as Mistress Shaw; and Brad Pitt as Bass

Director: Steve McQueen

BENEFITS OF THE MOVIE

It is important for students to understand the brutality and thoroughness of slavery as practiced in the American South and which was eradicated only a brutal and bloody civil war. It is also helpful for students to understand the worldwide dimensions of slavery, the current status of slavery, and to read at least parts of a slave narrative, the first genre of African-American literature.

Students will have a vivid understanding of the lives endured by slaves in the American South. Students will be introduced to slavery as a worldwide phenomenon that has existed for millennia and which continues to exist. Students will be introduced to the slave narrative, the first genre of African-American literature.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Problems Here.

PARENTING POINTS

Watch the movie with your child. When the film is over, tell him or her that the film is mostly historically accurate except that Solomon Northup was not as well-off or accepted by whites in Upstate New York in 1841 and that it is very unlikely that a black mistress was presiding over a plantation or that she would give tea to a slave from another plantation.

HELPFUL BACKGROUND

Essay on the historical accuracy of the movie 12 years a slave.

The book, Twelve Years a Slave, is a traditional American slave narrative told by Solomon Northup to ghostwriter David Wilson. It is one of the most important of the slave narratives because it was published shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s immensely popular and influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Twelve Years a Slave validated the claims of slave-owner brutality made in the novel. In addition, Twelve Years a Slave was a best-seller in its own right when it was first published in 1853. The historical accuracy of the book has been exhaustively vetted by Professor Sue Eakin of Louisiana State University. The culmination of her efforts are contained in the recently republished Enhanced Edition of the book which contains more than 100 pages of notes and supplemental materials. With a few exceptions, Professor Eakin has found the Northup/Wilson narrative to be accurate.

The film is a work of historical fiction based on the events set out in Mr. Northup’s book. To create an entertaining story arc and to fit the tale into a two-hour film, a number of events described in the book have been eliminated and others have been telescoped together. On a few occasions actions by one person have been attributed to another or scenes have been added to support the story. Except for the prelude, the scenes before the kidnaping, the murder of a slave by a sailor on the Orleans, and the tea scene with Mistress Shaw, the scenes shown in the film were taken from the book or are reasonable approximations of events that could have happened given current-day understanding of the history of the era.

On the whole, the book and the film are reasonably accurate representations of what life was like for a slave in the American South under one of the best masters (Ford) and later under one of the worst (Epps, who was not only sexually predatory but also extremely violent). The terrible way in which slaves were treated by slave traders and the awful plight of some slave women is also shown.

Set out below are comments on selected scenes in the film. Citations to the slave narrative itself are referred to as “Northup”. Citations to Professor Eakin’s notes are referred to as “Eakin”. Other citations are to articles in the Links to the Internet Section below.

• Prelude: The orgasm scene. This is not referred to in the book and was made up by the screenwriters to show “a bit of tenderness … Then after she climaxes, she’s back . . . in hell.” However, it would seem that Solomon Northup, who claims to have been strictly faithful to his wife for 12 years, would have been scandalized by this scene. Berlatsky
• Before the Kidnapping Northup was not in the middle class nor, in all probability, was he as well accepted by white society as shown in the early scenes of the film. His slave narrative makes no such claims. Northup lived in Saratoga Springs, a summer resort in upstate New York working as a carriage driver for a large boarding house during the summer season. He often had difficulty finding work during the rest of the year. Northup pp. 5 & 7. As shown in the film, he was a talented violinist and would get occasional jobs playing the violin for parties and dances. His wife had steady work as a cook although, as shown in the film, during the offseason she would have to work 20 miles from home, a long distance in those days when inland travel was by foot or by horse. Eakin 261 & 262. Northup himself comments about his life in Sarasota Springs: “Though always in comfortable circumstances, we had not prospered.” Northup pp. 5.  Nor would people in New York and in Washington D.C. have been as accepting of a black man as to hail him strolling as an equal through a city park or to allow him to eat at fine restaurants, or shop as an equal without care for the cost in the stores. In the 1840s U.S. society, North and South were extremely prejudiced against blacks. Eakin p. 261. Northup, for example, reports that when he was with the two kidnappers in Washington, D.C., they would order drinks and occasionally hand them to him. He was not necessarily sitting at the table with them. Northup p. 12.
• The Kidnapping: The kidnapping scenes do not follow Northup’s recollections in several ways. He doesn’t report, for example, being cared for in bed by the kidnappers, one of whom seems to regret what will happen to him. However, these scenes in the film add color to the bare historical facts of the narrative and, unlike the false prosperity and acceptance by whites shown in the scenes of Northup’s life in Saratoga Springs and his trip to D.C., these changes are appropriate poetic license in a work of historical fiction.
• In the D.C. Slave Pen: These scenes are realistic enough with touches of details from the book. Northup was indeed put in a dark cell, beaten with a paddle-shaped piece of wood until it broke, and then whipped with a cat-nine-tails. He was stripped naked before the beating. The slave pen was in sight of the U.S. capital. One of the jailers appeared to try to be nicer, as a ploy. A woman name Eliza, her children and several men were held at the pen with him. What the movie omits for lack of time are the fascinating and touching stories of these people. See Northup pp. 16, 19 – 23 and Assignment #1.
• The Trip to New Orleans: To shorten the narrative, the stop at a slave pen in Richmond is omitted. The facts of the aborted conspiracy are changed. Northup does not report that Eliza was taken to the upper deck for sex with a sailor as implied in the film. Robert dies from smallpox, not from a sailor’s knife; a sailor would not be so quick to kill such a valuable piece of property as shown in the film. Otherwise, the changes in the scene appear reasonable approximations of what could have happened and are true to Northup’s story.
• The Rescue of a Slave: One of the slaves with Northup on the ship Orleans, a man named Arthur, was reclaimed by his master, much to his delight. This scene is based on that report from the book. Northup p. 38.
• New Orleans: These scenes follow Northup’s recounting of what happened to him including: the scenes in which slaves are instructed to wash and are dressed up and offered for sale; the separation of Eliza from her children; Eliza’s protests and crying, Mr. Ford’s slight and ineffectual effort to convince Mr. Freeman (yes, that was the name of the New Orleans slave dealer) to sell him Eliza’s daughter at a reasonable price; and the characterization of Mr. Freeman the slave-trader.
• Arrival at Ford’s Plantation: Mrs. Ford is not reported as saying, “Something to eat and some rest – your children will soon be forgotten.” but this is a fair representation of the attitude of most plantation owners to the miseries of their slaves.
• The song Run Nigger Run: This is a Negro work song and if a white man ever sang it, it would be with the irony used by the character of Tibeats in the film. These scenes are not in the book but they are legitimate poetic license in a work of historical fiction.
• A Slave Work Party meets the Indians: Northup recounts meeting Native Americans who lived in the woods and watching them dance. Northup pp. 54 & 55.
• Northup Successfully Floats Logs Down the Bayou: This is from the book, including Northup’s success, Ford’s admiration, and Tibeat’s opposition and resentment when Northup is successful.
• Ford gives Northup a violin: Actually, it was Epps, at the request of Mrs. Epps. Northup p. 106.
• Northup’s Conversation with Eliza This is not reported in the book but it is a legitimate literary device to explore issues and develop themes. Eliza is still wailing about losing her children. Northup tells her to get over it. Eliza accuses Northup of being no better than prized live stock and laments that she has done dishonorable things to survive which ultimately did her no good. Northup’s position is that survival is everything.
• The Sunday Religious Service at the Ford Plantation: Eliza cries throughout the service. Mrs. Ford comments that she cannot have that depression about the plantation. This scene is not in the book, but again it is consistent with the cold and heartless attitude of the plantation elite toward the miseries that they caused to their slaves.
• Eliza taken away crying “Solomon”: This particular scene is not reported in the book. It is a dramatization of the fact that Northup was helpless to even protest the profound loss that Eliza was forced to endure. Northup reports that Eliza withered away and died of a broken heart. Northup p. 92.
• Flashback of Eliza Talking: Again, not in the book, but again a legitimate device by writers of historical fiction to bring out themes. “When I say I had my master’s favor – you understand – and for 9 years he blessed me with every comfort.” . . . “Such was our life, and the life of this beautiful girl I bore for him. But Master Berry’s daughter . . . she always looked at me with an unkind nature. She hated Emily no matter she and Emily were flesh of flesh. As Master Berry’s health failed, she gained power in the household. Eventually, I was brought to the city on the false pretense of our free papers being executed. If I had known what waited; to be sent south? I swear I would not have come here alive.”
• Fight With Tibeats – Northup Bound and Almost Hung: Northup reports a fight with Tibeats who was unhappy with nails Chapin had given to Northup. Northup thrashed Tibeats. Tibeats fled but returned with two other men. They bound Northup hands and feet and put a noose around his neck, but it was not strung up to a tree as in the movie. The tiptoes business is poetic license. Chapin, with pistols drawn, did chase off Tibeats and the two men, leaving Northup standing in the sun for hours, still bound hands and feet. Chapin sent for Ford who, as shown in the film, came and cut the cords. Solomon spent the night in the main house, guarded by Chapin, not by Ford. Northup pp.70 & 71. These scenes are basically true to the story. However, Northup relates two fights in which he thrashed Tibeats. Northup pp 63 – 72.
• Sale to Epps: At this point in the narrative, the movie skips several incidents in Northup’s career as a slave, including the second fight with Tibeats and Northup being hired out to other plantations to cut sugar cane. It is Tibeats rather than Ford who sells Northup to Epps. Northup pp. 75 – 93. The conversation with Ford in which Northup tries to tell Ford that he is a free man but Ford wouldn’t listen did not occur. Northup never reports trying to tell Ford that he was a free man. While generally complimentary of Ford in the book, Northup never trusted him enough to tell him the truth. This scene, while it didn’t occur, rings true. No matter how good a slaveholder might be, he was still a slaveholder.
• Epps preaching to the Slaves on Sunday “That servant which knew his Lord’s will and prepared not himself neither did according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes. . . . 150 lashes. That’s scripture.” This is an example of how religion was bent and perverted to support the interests of the slaveholders.
• Scenes in the Fields Picking Cotton: These scenes, some of which are not specifically in the book, are consistent with Northup’s description of life on the Epps plantation. See e.g., Northup pp. 94 – 99, 105. The authenticity of some of these scenes are doubted by Professor Eakin, specifically (1) “It is doubtful that [Patsey] possessed the skill to pick 500 pounds [of cotton per day].” Eakin p. 301, note 127; (2) it is unlikely that slaves were whipped in the fields from morning till night because this would violate the the “Plantation Survival Code” and harm the property of the plantation owner, Eakin pp. 300 – 301, notes 125 & 126; see also Note 112, pp. 295 & 296 for more on the Plantation Survival Code; note however, that Northup states that Epps was, except for one other master, the most violent master on the Bayou Boeuf, p. 108, and the question is not whether this was usual but whether it would be tolerated by other slaveholders; (3) Northup complains of being given a foot-wide board to sleep on with wood blocks for pillows “seems to stretch credulity” according to Professor Eakin because scraps of cotton were always left in the fields and could be used to stuff mattresses and plantation owners would want their slave to get rest. Eakin, Note 130 p. 302. Professor Eakin also notes that no one could live on small portions of corn and pork as described by Northup. Ibid This is correct but in several places Northup states that slaves had access to other food, such as raccoon, possum and fish. (Northup pp. 117 & 118. Professor Eakin attributes these likely errors to Northup’s ghost writer, David Wilson.
• Patsey making dolls and singing to herself: This scene, again not in the book, is to show that Patsey was still just a child in her development despite the fact that she was in her twenties during the years when Northup knew her.
• Epps Making Slaves Dance at Night: This is reported by Northup. Northup p. 107.
• Patsey’s Sexual Abuse by Epps/Jealousy by Mrs. and Mr. Epps:
• Northup also describes the fact that Epps required Patsey to submit to his sexual advances as well as the jealousy of Mrs. Epps and her general persecution of Patsey. He also described the jealousy of Mr. Epps when Patsey went to the Shaw plantation, for what he imagined was sex with Mr. Shaw. The abuse of Patsey shown in the film, including the whippings, the bottle hurled at Patsey, Epps’ refusal to sell Patsey, and Mrs. Epps’ humiliation are all derived from episodes in the book. See pp. 111, 116, 117 and 151 — 154.
• Getting paper: When sent to purchase goods at the store, Northup appropriates a piece of paper on which to write a letter home. This is in the book. Northup p. 136.
• Run-in with a Gang of Patrollers: Called Pattys or Patty Rollers by the slaves. See generally Northup pp. 130 & 131. The hanging by a patrol is not mentioned in the book, however, hangings of slaves planning an insurrection is mentioned.
• Northup Running Away to the Swamp The time when Northup ran away from Tibeats through the swamps is related at pp. 77 — 83.
• Northup is Sent to Retrieve Patsey from her Visit to Mistress Shaw, a Black Woman This scene is not realistic and is a bit of tongue-in-cheek to provide comic relief. However, the scene is not quite as unrealistic as it may at first seem. Plantation owners, with a few limitations, were seen as the lords of their manor and had complete discretion about how the ran their plantations. A few white plantation owners lived openly with their black concubines. On occasion, these men acknowledged their mulatto children, freed them, sent them north to be educated, and left them property. See Eakin Note 115, second paragraph, page 297. However, much more often than not, children of Master/Slave unions were treated as slaves. For an example of the unnatural lack of fatherly feeling of slave owners for their children, see the second anecdote taken from the life of Thaddeus Stevens in TWM’s Lesson Plan on the End of America’s Nightmare Dance With Slavery Using Spielberg’s Lincoln . It is hard to believe that other plantation owners would allow one of their fellow slave owners to install a black woman as the mistress of a plantation as shown in the tea scene in this film.
• Patsey asks Northup to Kill Her: – She says, “I ain’t got no comfort in this life.” He turns his back; she cries. This is apparently based on a misreading of the book at page 111, although with all that Patsey endured, a wish to end it all seems understandable. However, it was Mistress Epps who tried to bribe Northup to murder Patsey.
• The Caterpillars Eating the Cotton and Slaves Being Hired Out This comes from the book at pages 112, et seq.
• Armsby Incident: Northup did ask a white man who was working in the fields to help him, gave the man his savings, and was betrayed. Northup saved himself by lying to Epps, claiming Armsby just wanted to be his overseer, stressing that Northup had no one to write to, etc. Northup then burned the letter to avoid his lie being found out. The film’s rendition is reasonably accurate. Northup pp. 136 – 139.
• Death of a Slave — & “Roll Jordan, Roll”: This is fictional but realistic. Northup begins to sing accepting the fact that he is going to be a slave for a long time, perhaps forever.
• Northup Asks Bass for Help: This is a reasonable approximation of what occurred as reported by Northup. For more on Bass, see pp. 325 & 326.
• Liberation from the Field: This is a reasonable approximation of what occurred. Patsey’s Last Word to Northup “Oh! Platt,” she cried, tears streaming down her face, “you’re goin to be free — you’re goin way off yonder where we’ll neber see ye any more. You’ve saved me a good many whippins, Platt; I’m glad you’re goin’ to be free. — but oh! de Lod, de Lord! What’ll become of me?” Northup p. 187.
• Omitted from the film: No movie of reasonable length can include everything in a book of 200+ pages. Some of the incidents and scenes omitted include

The smallpox outbreak on the boat, Northup’s illness when he contracted smallpox, his stay in the hospital and recovery; Chapters V and VI;

Ford’s financial embarrassment which caused Ford to sell Northup to Tibeats; Chapter VIII;

Northup’s flight from Tibeats through the swamps back to Ford’s plantation; Chapter X;

The New Years celebrations and the few days that slaves didn’t have to work; XV;

The months’ long wait for Bass’ efforts to bring someone down from the North; Chapters XIX and XX;

The careful groundwork laid by Henry Northup to make his rescue of Solomon a success; for example, Henry Northup secured declarations from people who knew Solomon and took them to the governor of New York; as a result, under the authority of a ten-year-old law designed for the retrieval of kidnapped free blacks, Henry secured an appointment as an official agent of the state to reclaim Solomon; he then went to Washington D.C. and convinced a senator from Louisiana to write letters of recommendation to local officials; Northup p. 177; once in Louisiana, Henry hired a highly respected attorney to represent him; Ibid; they secured a court order and the cooperation of the sheriff before going to the Epps plantation. Northup pp. 181 & 182.

Henry Northup’s search for Solomon and the lucky chance that he found Mr. Bass who directed him to Northup’s location; the rush to liberate Northup before word of the rescue effort got to Epps who would have hidden Northup so that he could not be liberated.

USING THE MOVIE IN THE CLASSROOM

Before Showing the Film:

Consider distributing and having students review, TWM’s Movie Worksheet for 12 Years a Slave . Modify the worksheet as appropriate.

Information Helpful to Students:

Relate the following information to students to give them a better understanding of the movie.

The terms “paddy” and “pattyrollers” or “paddy rollers” were names given by slaves to patrols of whites who were paid to be on the lookout for fugitive slaves and to hunt down runaways. Paddy’s were armed and often brutal.

The culture of the people living in what is now the U.S. has been a slave culture or has tolerated slavery from 1619 when the first slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia until 1865. That is a period of 245 years, almost a century longer than the period since slavery has been abolished. Slavery was so intertwined with the culture of the American South that it took the bloodiest war in U.S. history to make it illegal. Even then substantial portions of the slave society survived for another hundred years in Jim Crow laws and customs. The country is still not completely free of the racism that aided and abetted slavery.

Solomon Northup’s book Twelve Years a Slave is one of the most important examples of a genre of American literature called the slave narrative. In fact, African-American literature in the U.S. begins with the slave narrative, most of which were told to white abolitionist ghost writers after slave had escaped from the South. Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave became a best-seller in 1853 and then a major motion picture 160 years later.

Test Your Historical Instincts Exercise:

Tell students the following: (1) It’s time to test your historical instincts. (2) The movie is reasonably historically accurate except for a few scenes. (3) As you watch the film, look for these scenes. After watching the movie, there will be a class discussion in which you may be asked to identify an inaccurate scene or set of scenes.

Note to Teachers: The heart of this exercise is the discussion after the film. Teachers can prepare for this discussion in about five minutes by reviewing the highlighted sections of TWM’s Essay on Historical Accuracy.

As an alternative to class discussion, students can be asked to write a paragraph on a scene or a set of scenes that their instinct tells them are inaccurate and why. The paragraphs will be graded only on the quality of the writing.

After Showing the Movie:

Complete the Test Your Historical Instincts Exercise:

Suggested Responses:

There are three substantial inaccuracies in the film: (a) the set of scenes before the kidnapping showing Northup as a prosperous individual fully accepted by white society; (b) the scene in which a lone sailor comes into the hold of the Orleans to take Eliza up to the deck and then knifes a slave who tries to protect her; and (c) Mistress Shaw giving Patsey tea.

There are no specifically correct answers to the questions about why the filmmakers chose to include these obviously incorrect scenes. A good discussion will raise the following issues.

As to the first scenes of the wealth and acceptance of Solomon Northup, one possible explanation is that the people who made the movie wanted to draw a contrast between the life that free blacks lived in the North and the life they lived as slaves in the South. A second possible reason is that the filmmakers didn’t want to alienate their audience by showing that blacks were discriminated against in the North before the Civil War and did not have equal rights. Another possibility is that the filmmakers wanted generally affluent filmgoers to be able to identify with the character of Solomon Northup. Whatever the reason, the filmmakers vastly underestimated their audience. Scenes showing Northup having a poor and struggling but intact family in New York would have been more accurate historically and also true to the tale told in Northup’s slave narrative. Properly presented, it would still have provided a stark contrast to Northup’s life as a slave in which families were routinely broken up and family values were routinely ignored by most slave masters.

On the trip, the New Orleans the movie shows the slave being stabbed to death by a sailor when the slave tries to protect Eliza from being taken up to the deck, presumably for sex. This scene didn’t occur. A slave did die on board the ship, but he died from smallpox. The historical record was altered and this incident was added because it’s very dramatic for Robert to be murdered while trying to protect Eliza. However, in 1841 a healthy male slave was worth $650 (estimated to be about $18,000 in 2014 dollars using an adaptation of the Consumer Price Index. It is unlikely that a sailor would so quickly kill such a valuable piece of property. In addition, it is unlikely that a sailor would have gone alone into the hold of a ship containing a number of unchained male slaves.

The scenes of the black Mistress Shaw taking tea with Patsey could have been placed in the film to show that there were a very few slaveholders who honored their slave concubines and freed them or their children. The scene is played “tongue-in-cheek” and could have been placed in the film solely for comic relief.

Additional Information for Students

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published in 1852, a year before Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. The novel was one of the most popular books ever published and historians say that it was an important factor in turning the North against any expansion of slavery into the Western Territories. Twelve Years a Slave was published the next year and confirmed the indictment of slavery contained in Stowe’s novel. The connection between the two books was not lost on the Northern Press. Eakin, pp. 262 – 265.

Twelve Years a Slave was ghostwritten for Northup by David Wilson, a lawyer/author. Wilson wrote the book and had it published in a period of three months. a very short period of time. He was spurred on by attorney Henry Northup, the family friend who went to Louisiana to free Solomon. Attorney Northup “figured that information from the forthcoming book would reach readers who could and would identify the kidnappers. Attorney Northup was correct.” Eakin p. 263 at note 3. While the kidnapers were found and prosecuted, they were not convicted because the proceedings were delayed by appeals and before the case could come to trial, Solomon Northup had disappeared again, this time for good. No one knows what happened to him or how he died.

People are still kidnapped and sold into slavery all over the world. Most current-day slavery in the U.S. is sexual slavery in which girls and young women are forced to be prostitutes.

Grave Suspicions about the Death of Solomon Northup: After he returned to freedom, Northup gave lectures to spur sales of his book, assisted in the Underground Railroad, and addressed abolitionist rallies.

He also pursued the criminal prosecution of the kidnappers who claimed that they hadn’t kidnapped Northup at all, but that it was a scheme that he had participated in to cheat Burch out of the money he paid to the kidnappers. They claimed to have done this before with a free black man from the North. Northup steadfastly denied this charge. Eakin pp. 215 & 216.

The criminal prosecution of the kidnappers ended when, after many years of delays in the Court proceedings, Northup disappeared and the case was dropped. Eakin pp. 210 – 214. Many who knew Solomon Northup believed that he was murdered by his kidnappers or kidnapped again and sold into slavery a second time.

The following is from the ending of Dr. Eakin’s study of Solomon Northup’s life at pages 217 & 217:

John Henry Northup, born in Sandy Hill [New York] in 1822, a nephew of Henry Northup, was well acquainted with both Solomon and Henry Northup. [He would have been 19 at the time of the kidnapping and 31 when Solomon Northup returned to New York.] He wrote his version of the story in 1909 in a letter to his cousin . . . who recounted it:

John Henry Northup said not long after they came home, Henry B. “got a lawyer to hear Sol’s story. Soon by questions he got enough to write a book.” According to John Henry, Solomon Northup: 12 Years in Slavery, written quickly and published in 1853, “created a sensation for it came out a short time after Uncle Tom’s Cabin . . . by Mrs. Stowe. The last I heard of him,” said John Henry in 1909, Sol “was lecturing in Boston to help sell his book . . . All at once said John Henry, “he disappeared . . . We believed that he was kidnapped and taken away or killed or both.”

Additional Curriculum Materials:

Teachers may want to provide students with the following handouts prepared by TWM. (1) The Slave Narrative as Literature and (2) Slavery: A World-Wide View, Then and Now (placing American slavery into a global and historical context). As to the latter TWM has prepared a homework assignment to test comprehension of the materials in the essay.

Turning Students Toward the Written Slave Narratives:

After students have seen the movie, turn their minds back to the written slave narratives by having them read all or a portion of Northup’s Twelve years a Slave (see assignments 1, 3 & 4 below) or by having them read all or a portion or another slave narrative, such as Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Set out below are several excerpts and one abridgment of slave narratives prepared by TWM for shorter student reading assignments.

• Chapters I – III of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself;
• Short excerpt from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself describing Mr. Douglass’ decision to learn to read at whatever cost;
• Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery chapters I – VI describing his experiences as a boy during slavery and just after Emancipation;
• Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I A Woman?” delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio; the link is to a web page setting out the best version of the speech in the vernacular and also a translation to standard English;
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs; (TWM has prepared a six-page handout intended to capture the imagination of students and interest them in reading Ms. Jacobs’ narrative (this document alone will convey many of the lessons contained in Ms. Jacobs’ narrative); for teachers who don’t want to assign the entire book, TWM has abridged this work and cut it to about 1/3rd its original size; see TWM’s Abridged Version of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself”).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

After watching the film, teachers can engage the class in a discussion about the movie.

1. Have the class read the following excerpt from pages 48 & 49 of Northup’s book. Then ask the class to evaluate the character of William Ford.

Our master’s name was William Ford. He resided then in the “Great Pine Woods,” in the parish of Avoyelles, situated on the right bank of Red River, in the heart of Louisiana. He is now a Baptist preacher. Throughout the whole parish of Avoyelles, and especially along both shores of Bayou Boeuf, where he is more intimately known, he is accounted by his fellow-citizens as a worthy minister of God. In many northern minds, perhaps, the idea of a man holding his brother man in servitude, and the traffic in human flesh, may seem altogether incompatible with their conceptions of a moral or religious life. From descriptions of such men as Burch and Freeman, and others hereinafter mentioned, they are led to despise and execrate the whole class of slaveholders, indiscriminately. But I was sometime his slave, and had an opportunity of learning well his character and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different. Nevertheless, he was a model master, walking uprightly, according to the light of his understanding, and fortunate was the slave who came to his possession. Were all men such as he, Slavery would be deprived of more than half its bitterness.

Suggested Response:

Make sure that all sides are represented. If there is a consensus in the class for one side or the other, the teacher should make the contrary argument.

2. What factors both within Northup and in his situation allowed him to survive the ordeal of being kidnaped and enslaved?

They include a) Tremendous patience and perseverance. Northup waited years for opportunities to attempt to regain his freedom. During the interim periods, he kept silent about his kidnapping and his right to be free. b) While the kidnapping was very bad luck, there were many instances in which Northup had good luck. These included: (1) encountering Mr. Bass — people like Bass were hard to come by in the South because the Slave Power didn’t generally allow dissent and abolitionists were expelled or lynched; (2) having a friend in the North like Henry Northup who had the capacity and willingness to secure Solomon Northup’s liberation; and (3) the way in which Henry Northup found Bass before Bass left the state. c) The ability to make Epps believe that Armsby was lying about the letter. d) The fact that the U.S. is a nation of laws in which the State of Louisiana would honor an order from the governor of the State of New York which caused a substantial financial loss to a Louisiana citizen.

3. During WWII the Germans established slave labor camps that were strikingly similar to plantations in the Southern U.S. The Germans imprisoned Jews, Poles, Russians, political dissidents and other people, fed them very little, and compelled them to work hard — all without pay. In the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials the U.S. accused some of the managers of those camps with crimes against humanity. This occurred just 80 years after the slaves on the last Southern Plantation were set free. What does this juxtaposition of facts indicate to you?

There is no one correct response. Some good ideas are: (1) Human society has advanced in some important ways or, in other words, the arc of history bends toward justice. (2) Like other nations, unless the U.S. is careful, it can act in ways that are oppressive and wrong. George Washington said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” — this applies to monitoring your own actions as well as to being vigilant to protect your country from others.

4. Describe some of the effects of slavery, as practiced in the American South, on the slave and on the slave owner that are exemplified by the characters in this movie.

The slaves lost their right to be free, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, sometimes to choose their spouses, to keep their families intact and see their children grow up, to choose their profession, and, for the women, to choose their sexual partners. The slave masters may have profited financially but they suffered personally becoming hypocrites (Mr. Ford), becoming callous to the suffering of others (all of the plantation owners and overseers, including the Fords, the Epps, Chapin and Tibbeats) or by becoming a torturer and abuser of their fellow human beings (Epps and Tibbeats).

HUMAN RIGHTS

See Discussion Question #4.

MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS (CHARACTER COUNTS)

(Treat others with respect; follow the Golden Rule; Be tolerant of differences; Use good manners, not bad language; Be considerate of the feelings of others; Don’t threaten, hit or hurt anyone; Deal peacefully with anger, insults, and disagreements)

See Discussion Questions 1 & 3.

See also Discussion Questions which Explore Ethical Issues Raised by Any Film .

ASSIGNMENTS, PROJECTS & ACTIVITIES

Any of the discussion questions can serve as a writing prompt. Additional assignments include:

1. Additional Assignments to Turn Students Toward the Written Slave Narrative

These assignments will require students to read sections of Northup’s book and give reports to the class or write short essays on some of the details in the book that are omitted from the movie. They can also be asked to evaluate whether various scenes accurately reflect what is set out in the book. This assignment will also enhance students’ understanding of the history of slavery. Suggestions for assignments are:

• Describe in your own words the people Solomon met in the various slave pens in which he was confined before being sent to the plantation of John Ford. They include: Eliza and her children, Clemens Ray, John Williams, and a man identified only as Robert. Read Chapters III and IV and page 92 to get the information for this project. [This assignment can be divided and each student can be given one person to describe.]
• Describe in your own words the aborted conspiracy on the boat. Describe how the movie differs from the book in the depiction of this episode. Speculate on why the filmmakers made this change. Read Chapter V to obtain the information for this project.
• Describe in your own words how it came about that Northup sent a letter home. Speculate on why the filmmakers omitted this scene. Read Chapter V to obtain the information for this project.
• Write an essay on whether the movie portrays what really happened at Freeman’s Slave Pen in New Orleans. Read Chapter V to get the information for this project.
• Write an essay on whether the movie portrays what really happened to Patsey. Read pages 96, 109 – 111, 116, 117, & 151 – 154 to get the information for this project.

2. Assignments for Research On Topics Relating to Solomon Northup

• Retrieve and describe documents in the national archive documenting Solomon Northup’s life [Note to Teachers: see The Documents Behind Twelve Years a Slave The National Archives, November 5, 2013];
• Describe the relationship between Solomon Northup’s book and the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin [Note to Teachers: see Eakin pp.262 – 265.];
• Write a report on what happened when Solomon Northup returned to Washington, D.C.; [Note to Teachers: see N.Y. Times Article from January 20, 1853 , and Eakin pp. 198 — 217 .]
• Describe the origin and meaning of the song “Run Nigger, Run”
• Write a short biographical sketch of Henry B. Northup, the attorney who rescued Solomon Northup, and the relationship between the white and the black Northups.[Note to Teachers: see Eakin, note 6, pp. 266 & 267.]
• The relationship of Dr. Sue Eakin with the book and her contribution to the story of Solomon Northup [Note to Teachers: see the first few unnumbered pages of the Enhanced Edition published by Eakin Films & Publishing.]

3. Students can be asked to create a drawing or write a poem about key scenes from the book. Instruct students to read the indicated pages of the book as they begin the assignment.

• The scene in the Washington slave pen when Northup realizes that he had been kidnapped; read Northup chapters II & III;
• The scene when Eliza’s daughter is taken from her in Freeman’s New Orleans slave showroom; read Northup Chapter VI.;
• The whipping of Patsey — read Northup pp. 96, 109 – 111, 116, 117, & 151 – 154;
• The scene when Northup is working in the field and is freed by the sheriff and Henry Northup; read Northup pp. 182 – 187;
• Northup’s reunion with his family, pp. 195 & 196.

4. Write a work of historical fiction, either a screenplay or a short story, describing what happened when Attorney Henry Northup went to Louisiana to free Solomon Northup. You may add or delete scenes but keep your story primarily true to the historical narrative and make it exciting. There is the stuff of drama in this incident!@ Read Northup pp. 168 – 186 to get the information for this project.

5. Research the usual elements of a 19th-century American slave narrative and write an essay describing how the story told by the movie conforms to or departs from those elements.

CCSS ANCHOR STANDARDS

Multimedia:

Anchor Standard #7 for Reading (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). (The three Anchor Standards read: “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media, including visually and quantitatively as well as in words.”) CCSS pp. 35 & 60. See also Anchor Standard # 2 for ELA Speaking and Listening, CCSS pg. 48.

Anchor Standards #s 1, 2, 7 and 8 for Reading and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 35 & 60.

Anchor Standards #s 1 – 5 and 7- 10 for Writing and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 41 & 63.

Speaking and Listening:

Anchor Standards #s 1 – 3 (for ELA classes). CCSS pg. 48.

Not all assignments reach all Anchor Standards. Teachers are encouraged to review the specific standards to make sure that over the term all standards are met.

BRIDGES TO READING

The book itself is remarkably well written for a work that was pulled together in three months. See the books and materials listed in the Section on Turning Students to the Written Slave Narratives in Helpful Background.

LINKS TO THE INTERNET

• How 12 Years a Slave Gets History Right: By Getting It Wrong by Noah Berlatsky , The Atlantic, Oct. 28 2013.
• Historian at the Movies: 12 Years a Slave reviewed interview of Dr. Emily West in History Extra, January 13, 2014; “I have never seen a film represent slavery so accurately.”
• The Documents Behind Twelve Years a Slave The National Archives, by Stephanie on November 5, 2013; (includes census records and slave manifests);
• DocsTeach activity “Twelve Years a Slave” from the National Archive; (See Teacher Instructions for this activity;
• N.Y. Times Article from January 20, 1853 or another version ;
• Run Nigger Run recorded song and lyrics – The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection, Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas
• Run Nigger Run also from the John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection;
• Nigger Run , Wikimedia Commons;

Other lesson plans: Text to Text: ‘Twelve Years a Slave,’ and ‘An Escape That Has Long Intrigued Historians’ By Michael Gonchar and Tom Marshall, October 22, 2013

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The works cited in this Learning Guide are the Enhanced Edition of Twelve Years a Slave published by Eakin Films & Publishing, the websites which may be linked in the Guide and the sites listed in the Links to the Internet section.

This Learning Guide was written by James Frieden and first published on July 29, 2014.

LEARNING GUIDE MENU:

Benefits of the Movie Parenting Points Selected Awards & Cast Helpful Background Using the Movie in the Classroom Discussion Questions Social-Emotional Learning Moral-Ethical Emphasis Assignments and Projects CCSS Anchor Standards Bridges to Reading Links to the Internet Bibliography

MOVIE WORKSHEETS:

Citations in this  Learning Guide  are to the Enhanced Edition published by Eakin Films & Publishing. Citations to the slave narrative itself are referred to as “ Northup “. Citations to Professor Eakin’s notes and supplemental materials, beginning on page 198 are referred to as “ Eakin “.

BUILDING VOCABULARY:

Click here for interesting quotes from the film at the Internet Movie Database. The entire script can be found on  Internet Movie Script Database .

Slavery: the Nation’s “Peculiar Institution”:

RANDALL KENNEDY, Professor, Harvard Law School on the two alternative traditions relating to racism in America:

“I say that the best way to address this issue is to address it forthrightly, and straightforwardly, and embrace the complicated history and the complicated presence of America. On the one hand, that’s right, slavery, and segregation, and racism, and white supremacy is deeply entrenched in America. At the same time, there has been a tremendous alternative tradition, a tradition against slavery, a tradition against segregation, a tradition against racism.

I mean, after all in the past 25 years, the United States of America has seen an African-American presence. As we speak, there is an African-American vice president. As we speak, there’s an African- American who is in charge of the Department of Defense. So we have a complicated situation. And I think the best way of addressing our race question is to just be straightforward, and be clear, and embrace the tensions, the contradictions, the complexities of race in American life. I think we need actually a new vocabulary.

So many of the terms we use, we use these terms over and over, starting with racism, structural racism, critical race theory. These words actually have been weaponized. They are vehicles for propaganda. I think we would be better off if we were more concrete, we talked about real problems, and we actually used a language that got us away from these overused terms that actually don’t mean that much.   From Fahreed Zakaria, Global Public Square, CNN, December 26, 2021

Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM’s Guide: TWO CONTRASTING TRADITIONS RELATING TO RACISM IN AMERICA and a Tragic Irony of the American Revolution: the Sacrifice of Freedom for the African-American Slaves on the Altar of Representative Democracy.

A Great Lincoln Saying

Illustrations from the original edition:.

Kidnapping was a very real fear of free blacks in the North.

Very few kidnapped blacks were ever heard from again.

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12 Years a Slave

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• Senses of Cinema - The Free Mind of a Man in Captivity: 12 Years A Slave, Book and Film
• Academia - Directed by Himself: Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave
• AFI Catalog - 12 Years a Slave
• CSUSB ScholarWorks - Film Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)
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12 Years a Slave , American dramatic film , released in 2013, that impressed critics and audiences with its harrowing depiction of slavery in the antebellum South. The movie won the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for best picture as well as the Golden Globe Award for best drama. Based on the autobiographical narrative (1853) of Solomon Northup , the film chronicles the grueling experiences of slavery and the dehumanizing effects of human bondage on everyone involved.

( Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation. )

The film opens with the enslaved Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) in a sugarcane field with other slaves and then tells Northup’s story in an extended flashback. Northup was born a freeman in New York . He is married with two children and is an accomplished violinist. Two men (Scoot McNairy, Taran Killam) entice him to Washington, D.C. , with the promise of a high-paid job playing music in a circus of sorts. They drug him and deliver him to a slave pen, from which he is shipped to New Orleans and sold by a slave trader ( Paul Giamatti ) as a runaway slave named Platt to a relatively kind plantation owner, Ford ( Benedict Cumberbatch ). Northup incurs the enmity of Ford’s slave handler, Tibeats (Paul Dano). Tibeats arranges to have Northup lynched, but Ford’s overseer, Chapin (J.D. Evermore), stops the lynching moments before Northup is actually hanged. Because of Tibeats’s hostility, Ford sells Northup to Epps (Michael Fassbender), a particularly vicious and alcoholic plantation owner.

On Epps’s plantation, Northup becomes friends with another slave, Patsey ( Lupita Nyong’o ). Epps pays particular attention to Patsey, often expressing his obsession by raping her, and his jealous wife (Sarah Paulson) frequently attacks her. At one point, Epps decides that Patsey has earned punishment, and he forces Northup to whip her. Northup’s repeated attempts to regain his freedom finally yield success when Bass ( Brad Pitt ), a Canadian abolitionist working as a hired hand for Epps, is convinced that Northup’s story is true and alerts the authorities in Northup’s hometown of Saratoga Springs , New York. A sheriff arrives with a neighbour of Northup’s from Saratoga, and he is released.

Northup’s memoir was researched and verified by American researchers Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, and they published an annotated edition of the book in 1968. Director Steve McQueen had already expressed interest in making a film about slavery in the United States when Northup’s book was brought to his attention. McQueen was the first black producer and the first black director of a movie that won the Oscar for best picture. Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o made her feature film debut in 12 Years a Slave , and she won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Patsey.

• Studios: Regency Enterprises, River Road Entertainment, Plan B Entertainment, and New Regency Pictures
• Director: Steve McQueen
• Writers: John Ridley (screenplay), Solomon Northup (memoir)
• Music: Hans Zimmer
• Chiwetel Ejiofor (Solomon Northup)
• Scoot McNairey (Brown)
• Taran Killam (Hamilton)
• Paul Giamatti (Freeman, the slave trader)
• Benedict Cumberbatch (Ford)
• Paul Dano (Tibeats)
• J.D. Evermore (Chapin)
• Michael Fassbender (Epps)
• Sarah Paulson (Mistress Epps)
• Lupita Nyong’o (Patsey)
• Brad Pitt (Bass)
• Lead actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor)
• Supporting actor (Michael Fassbender)
• Supporting actress* (Lupita Nyong’o)
• Costume design
• Production design

A Critical Introduction to 12 Years a Slave

• Kathryn Hampshire
• Bryce Longenberger
• Ramona Simmons
• Esther Wolfe

In this critical anthology of essays, the authors examine Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave from a variety of analytic frameworks, including feminist theory, trauma studies, film theory, and deconstruction. The authors explore critical questions concerning the politics of representing trauma and violence, the politics of slave suicide, and the intersections of race and gender in the experiences of slave women.

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Historian Says '12 Years' Is A Story The Nation Must Remember

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man in upstate New York who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and won his freedom 12 years later. The film 12 Years a Slave is an adaptation of Northup's 1853 memoir. Jaap Buitendijk/Fox Searchlight hide caption

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man in upstate New York who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and won his freedom 12 years later. The film 12 Years a Slave is an adaptation of Northup's 1853 memoir.

"We love being the country that freed the slaves," says historian David Blight. But "we're not so fond of being the country that had the biggest slave system on the planet." That's why Blight was glad to see the new film 12 Years a Slave, an adaptation of an 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup. Northup was a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and won his freedom 12 years later. "We need to keep telling this story because it, in part, made us who we were," Blight tells Fresh Air 's Terry Gross.

Blight is the director of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. His 2007 book, A Slave No More, includes the recently discovered narratives of two former slaves. He's currently writing a biography of Frederick Douglass, who after escaping slavery, wrote perhaps the most famous and important of all slave memoirs and became an influential abolitionist.

Blight joins Gross to explain where this memoir fits into the genre of slave narratives, and to review the accuracy of the film. He says the movie does an excellent job of depicting "just how much slaves were utterly commodities, physical commodities in the slave trade."

Interview Highlights

On why it's important for Americans to remember this history

It's a problem in our culture because, to be quite blunt about it, most Americans want their history to be essentially progressive and triumphal, they want it to be a pleasing story. And if you go back to this story, it's not always going to please you, but it's a story you have to work through to find your way to something more redemptive.

On what makes the memoir 12 Years a Slave unique

Solomon Northup's memoir tells this quite unusual story of the kidnapping of a free Northern African-American and his enslavement in the Deep South in Louisiana — on two, three different kinds of plantations. ... He's not only exhibiting an extraordinary memory of names, details and places, but it's also a narrative that gives us a window into the kinds of labor, the kinds of economies that existed on these huge, brutal cotton and sugar plantations. We don't have that many narratives ... that actually tell the story of what it was actually like on a huge cotton operation or a huge sugar operation in the Deep South.

David Blight is the director of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of American Oracle and A Slave No More . Yale University hide caption

David Blight is the director of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of American Oracle and A Slave No More .

On the domestic slave trade

[Kidnapping was] not terribly common, in terms of numbers, but it did happen. And one of the reasons that happened is the domestic slave trade in the United States — the selling of slaves within the borders of the United States just booms in huge numbers [between 1810 to the 1840s.] So when Solomon Northup is seized and kidnapped in 1841 and sold down through Washington, D.C., to a trader who then sells him again onto a ship, and off they go to New Orleans to the great slave market — it's part of a huge business all over the American South with dozens and dozens and dozens of full-time slave traders making tremendous livings. ...

The domestic slave trade moved approximately 1 million African-Americans from the East Coast, the upper South, into the Deep South from about 1820 to the Civil War in 1860, so what happens to Solomon Northup is unusual in the sense that he was kidnapped the way he was, but being sold into the domestic slave trade was not unusual at all. And part of that reason is ... the great cotton boom of the lower Mississippi Valley.

On whether Northup really could have seen the U.S. Capitol from his slave pen

Washington, D.C., had a slave pen, a slave market about three to four blocks from the U.S. Capitol. In fact, the primary slave market in D.C. at that time is located roughly where Union Station is today.

On papers that were meant to protect free blacks in the North from enslavement

They were ... issued by either a court or a city or a town that declared that you were born free, that your mother was free. And for free blacks in the North, especially in certain regions, these were terribly important documents because [they] could protect them from kidnapping and enslavement. Solomon Northup apparently did have such papers, but of course they were taken or destroyed, so when he was ... sent down to Louisiana and out onto those God-forsaken plantations, he not only has no documentation — but what good it would've done him is another matter. He's in extremely remote areas. ...

He was very, very careful never to say what his real identity was, apparently for fear that if his masters believed him they might sell him away again, sell him farther away, who knows. But then we've also got a tale here, of course, about literacy, because he was literate enough to be able to write these letters and to communicate or attempt to communicate with the outside world, and especially with people in New York who could give him legal assistance.

More On '12 Years A Slave'

Code Switch

'12 years' is the story of a slave whose end is a mystery.

'12 Years' Star Alfre Woodard: 'You're Never Too Young For The Truth'

'12 Years A Slave': 160 Years Later, A Memoir Becomes A Movie

British Filmmakers Shift American 'Conversation On Race'

Movie Reviews

For a free spirit, a grim '12 years' in chains.

On the importance of literacy for slaves

A literate slave was a dangerous slave. A literate slave could read newspapers; a literate slave was always more intelligent or deemed more intelligent by the master class and by overseers. At the heart it's one of the great threads of Frederick Douglass' autobiography as well — the place that literacy plays in the life of a slave as a source of some kind of power, the ability to read about the outside world, the ability to communicate with the outside world is a way to put cracks in the police state of slavery.

On how, as a historian , he feels about the film

I liked the film very much ... slavery is only rarely ever depicted effectively in Hollywood pictures. This film stays quite loyal to the narrative itself. It's accurate in that sense. I also found the acting terrific.

And I guess I just have to say that especially after the recent [Quentin] Tarantino film Django Unchained , this is a very, very good corrective for a major motion picture in trying to depict the character of slavery — as the fear in the human heart when one loses one's sense of humanity and dignity, because that's what's at the heart of this story.

The Cultural Significance of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave

by Mollie Lieblich

Drugged and beaten, Solomon Northup was illegally kidnapped from his hometown in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York and taken to Washington, D.C. in 1841. He woke up in the slave pen where he was sadistically remade from a black free man in the North into a slave in the South. Questioning his fate, Northup asked, “could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home—that I had been chained and beaten without mercy—that I was even herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? 1  Detailing his transformation into “chattel” property, Northup recollected that the slave trader, “would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase.” 2  Forced to accept his new-found status as a captured slave, Solomon Northup was sold “down river” to Louisiana and labored for twelve years, toiling on cotton and sugar plantations in the South.

Set to come out in October 2013, Brad Pitt and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in a movie “12 Years a Slave” directed by Steve McQueen based on Solomon Northup’s Slave narrative.

Solomon Northup’s slave narrative, Twelve Years A Slave; Narrative of a Citizen of New-York, Solomon Northup, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, Rescued in 1853, From a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana, achieved a remarkable degree of success as an abolitionist indictment against slavery . First published in 1853, three years after the Fugitive Slave Act, Northup’s narrative served as an important cultural symbol of slave life on southern plantations during antebellum America before the Civil War.

Born into freedom, Northup was kidnapped into slavery at the age of thirty. Lured to Washington, D.C. in 1841 by the promise of easy employment, fast money, and adventure, Northup was in reality drugged, beaten, and sold into slavery within sight of the nation’s capital. According to historian Ira Berlin, Northup “joined the mass of black humanity—some one million in number—that was forcibly transported South to reconstruct the plantation economy on new ground, as the center of American slavery shifted from the production of tobacco and rice in the seaboard states to that of cotton and sugar in the interior.” 3 Between 1790 and 1860, approximately one million African Americans were transported from the Upper South to the Deep South in the domestic slave trade. 4

While in captivity, Northup wrote letters to family and friends in the North which later became the raw materials of his slave narrative. From the 1740’s to 1865, approximately sixty-five autobiographical slave narratives were published in book or pamphlet form. 5  Created as propaganda for abolitionism, slave narratives often conformed to reoccurring narrative structures and literary conventions. Authenticity was considered essential. Most pre-emancipation slave narratives include phrases such as “written by himself” or “herself” on title pages, as well as numerous testimonials, prefaces, and letters of endorsement by white abolitionists and supporters. The narratives usually began, “I was born,” identifying a specific birthplace but no date of birth, since slaves often did not have that knowledge. Many narratives also included a photo or engraved portrait of the author and included appendices— bills of sale, free papers, newspaper clippings, sermons, speeches, poems simultaneously upheld the legitimacy of their story while arguing the case against slavery. 6  Slave narratives proved that, despite the odds, many slaves managed to escape their degradation and learned how to read and write. After escaping their bondage and making contacts with abolitionists, they were able to tell their tale to others.

When the abolitionist movement identified ex-slaves interested in publishing their stories, white editors conformed narratives to the dictates of nineteenth century sentimental literature in order to appeal to audiences nationwide. Publishers and editors reinforced themes that shocked the nation.  

Twelve Years A Slave —The Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup

Even when ex-slaves wrote their own narratives, many struggled to gain full free expression and narrative authority from the restrictions of white editorial control. Solomon Northup’s experience in slavery quickly became national news after his rescue in 1853 from a cotton plantation in Louisiana. Promoted by abolitionist leaders like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Lloyd Garrison, Northup’s book quickly became a strong seller, going through half a dozen printings. 7 At three hundred and thirty pages, Northup’s is one of the longest narratives ever written. To counter critics who would have discredited his narrative as fabrication, Northup—unlike Frederick Douglass or other authors of slave life who preferred generalities and employed pseudonyms—loaded his account with specifics. He cited actual names, places and dates so that his readers could identify and bring his captors to trial. Twelve Years A Slave , Northup declared, would “present a full and truthful statement of all the principal events in the history of my life, and…portray the institution of slavery as I have seen and known it.” 8  Northup wanted to present an accurate, first-hand account of the atrocities and terrors of slavery and to bring his captors to trial.

Violence, Plantation Work, and the Desecration of the Family

Twelve Years A Slave is one of the most authentic descriptions of slavery from the viewpoint of the slave himself. 9  Extreme violence is central in Northup’s narrative; he emphasizes that the slave owner’s authority was only maintained by terrorizing enslaved black people they owned with relentless physical and psychological violence. Whips, paddles, shackles, and the stocks make repeat appearances, especially in Solomon’s description of his life as a newly kidnapped free man. Stripped of his clothing and nailed to the floor, Northup endured blow after blow to his naked body after he awoke in a slave pen; his enslavers paused only to ask if their prisoner would accept his new status. As Northup recollected,

As soon as these formidable whips appeared, I was seized by both of them, and roughly divested of my clothing. My feet, as has been stated, were fastened to the floor […]. With the paddle, Burch commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted on my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before.

–solomon northup (44-45).

It was only after the paddle broke and his enslaver seized a rope to continue beating him that Northup was finally silenced into accepting his new identity as a slave. In these scenes of brutality, Northup insisted such sadistic events were so traumatic that he could still feel them while writing. “I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell.”

The second major theme in Northup’s narrative is the constant and unrelenting hardship of plantation work. The images that Northup captures in his descriptions of life and labor on the plantations of Louisiana depict the sheer exhaustion, monotony, and fear that each slave struggled with physically and psychologically. As Northup recalled,

An hour before daylight the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water […] and hurry to the field again […]. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave’s daily life, during the time of cotton-picking on the shores of Bayou Beouf. 10

Northup’s rendering of the daily life of slavery captures the incessant emotional and physical toll of slavery’s imprisonment.

Solomon Northup also detailed the experiences of the slave women he encountered during his twelve years as a slave, and especially elaborated on the experience of Patsey, a twenty-three-year-old slave who was the victim of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. Caught between her white mistress’s jealous wrath and the sexual abuse of her master, Northup recalled that Patsey lived her life in torment and fear,

If [Patsey] uttered a word in opposition to her master’s will, the lash was resorted to at once, to bring her to subjection; if she was not watchful about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood, or a broken bottle perhaps, hurled from her mistress’s hand, and would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and hate, Patsey had no comfort of her life. 11

Although Patsey was a faithful slave and worked in the cotton fields for her master’s profit, she became the helpless victim of her master’s lust. Pasty’s mistress took her jealous anger out on her female slave instead of finding fault in her husband. “Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see [Patsey] suffer,” noted Northup. He continued, “more than once, when [master] Epps refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp.” 12  Doubly abused by the sexual terror and physiological torment of her master and mistress, respectively, Patsey’s story represented the brutality of slavery experienced by bondswomen. At the hands of white men, Northup made clear, black women were sexually and physically exploited with impunity during slavery. This normalization of sexual exploitation of slave women reflected the racist perceptions and stigmatization of black women.

Female slaves also faced the separation of families and children. In his account, Northup noted the intense emotions of female slave mothers at the auction block. Relating the remorselessness of white slave traders who disregarded the feelings of slave mothers separated from their children, he recalled the intense grieving of a female slave named Eliza after she had been forcibly separated from her two young children. Eliza was overwhelmed with grief when a new white master purchased her children and not herself. As Northup noted,

All the time the trade was going on, Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy [her child], unless he also bought herself and [her other small child]. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived. The man answered that he could not afford it, and then Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. 13

Forced to confront the realities of fleeting motherhood as a slave, female bondswomen suffered terribly from the emotional separation of themselves and their children in the uncertain world of the American slave trade. By displaying the abuse black women suffered during slavery—from sexual terror, physiological torment, and the separation of families—Northup’s narrative was able to evoke a sympathetic antislavery feeling in the Northern states in the decades before the Civil War by exposing the horrors upon its innocent victims.

The Process of Writing Solomon Northup’s Slave Narrative

Northup’s story was written immediately after his rescue while still fresh in his mind. His book had fewer romanticized memory errors which other slave narratives suffered from, such as the oral history interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of surviving ex-slaves during the 1930s. These narratives are used sparingly by historians since former slaves were interviewed in their old age and in many cases, the interviewer was white, who would either intimidate the former slave they were interviewing or the former slave would feel uncomfortable because of lingering racism prevalent during the 1930’s Jim Crow south.

To emphasize the narrative’s authenticity, Northup and his editor dedicated the 1854 second edition to Harriet Beecher Stowe, in recognition of her widely successful antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Northup’s experience as a slave depicted a “striking parallel” to Stowe’s fictitious account of the slave named Uncle Tom under the hands of his tyrannical master. In response to the critics who had denounced Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a sentimental, overly exaggerated portrayal of slavery, Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853 to prove that her novel was a truthful depiction of antebellum slavery. She wrote in A Key , “it is a singular coincidence, that Solomon Northup was carried to a plantation in the Red River county—that same region where the scene of Uncle Tom’s captivity was laid—and his account of this plantation, and the mode of life there, and some incidents which he describes, form a striking parallel to that history.” 14  The publication of Northup’s narrative, a year after Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, gave credibility to both of their works. Northup’s rendering of daily life on a Louisiana plantation served as an authentic parallel to Stowe’s fictitious story of Uncle Tom.

There is no way to verify who actually wrote Twelve Years A Slave , but historians speculate that it was a collaborative project between Solomon Northup and his white editor, David Wilson, who was a minor literary figure from a town in New York’s Hudson Valley. 15  Even if Northup was not the sole author, he was very involved in the creation of the book’s content. Wilson, trying to generate sales for his book, said that Northup “carefully perused the manuscript,” correcting even “trivial inaccuracies.” Over the years, Northup’s account has held up to all verification efforts. 16  In the “Editor’s Preface” to Twelve Years A Slave , Wilson refers to himself as the “editor” and mentions that due to “all the facts which have been communicated to him,” the work ended up being longer than originally anticipated. Northup wrote in the first person, and asserted in the first pages that his purpose was “to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.” 17  In the wake of newspaper reports of his rescue from slavery, Henry Northup (a white attorney and lifelong friend from New York whose family had once owned Solomon’s father), Solomon Northup, and David Wilson collaborated and published his story within the first few months of his return to the North. Henry Northup gave Wilson an incentive to publish the book as quickly as possible in the wake of news reports of Solomon’s rescue. The attorney rightfully figured that information from the book would quickly reach readers who could, and who eventually did, identify the kidnappers.

A number of northern newspapers, such as The New York Tribune, Buffalo Express, Cincinnati Journal, and Syracuse Journal , praised the publication as a credible depiction of southern slavery and its degradation. Former slave and leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass praised the book in his northern newspaper, The North Star , as “a strange history; its truth is far greater than fiction. Think of it! For thirty years a man, with all a man’s hopes, fears, and aspirations—with a wife and children to call by the endearing names of husband and father—with a home, humble it may be, but still a home […], then for twelve years a thing, a chattel personal, classed with mules and horses, […] It chills the blood to think that such are.” 18  Press reviews from William Lloyd Garrison, (whose newspaper, The Liberator , called the book “a deeply interesting and thrilling narrative”) contributed to its success and convinced Northup to give lectures and turn it into a play. Northup’s Twelve Years A Slave was on par with other best-sellers of the day. In the years before the Civil War, nearly 30,000 copies of Northup’s book were sold. 19

The publication of slave narratives in the antebellum and postemancipation eras challenged former slaves to face their experiences in slavery and demanded that the nation remember it as part of a collective history. As Frederick Douglass warned in an 1884 speech, “It is not well to forget the past. The past is…the mirror in which we may discern the dim outlines of the future and by which we make them more symmetrical.” 20 Recollecting and remembering slavery not only served as a national project to acknowledge its brutality, but it also placed former black slaves at the center and emphasized their agency in the drama for emancipation. By publishing the traumatic aspects of his life in captivity as a southern slave, Northup brought to light the sadism of American slavery, raised awareness in Northern audiences, and brought national attention to the injustices brought upon him. His book served as a tool for redemption while raising the consciousness about the barbarity of slavery—the inhumane separation of families, the beatings and torture of overseers and masters, and the sexual exploitation of slave women. Whether we view these narratives as wholly factual or not, they serve as important cultural reminders of an ugly part of American history that left its imprint on those who were its victims as well as on American society as a whole.

Twelve Years a Slave

by Solomon Northup

Twelve years a slave essay questions.

What are the "free papers" that Solomon has?

Solomon lived in a time in America when most black people were slaves. However, in some parts of the country, some slave owners could decide to free their slaves after a period of time, or the slaves could be released after their master died. Also, if a black man or woman had the financial means, they could buy their own freedom. To distinguish between black fugitive slaves and free black people, some states started issuing freedom papers and certificates of freedom. Those papers attested that a black person was indeed a free one. The papers were extremely important because, in some parts of the country, some men made a living by capturing runaway slaves and selling them again. The papers made sure that a free person remained free even if that person were captured by the police or by the aforementioned slave hunters. If a black person lost their freedom papers, they could no longer attest they were indeed free, meaning that they could be easily sold off as slaves once more.

Why did Solomon need a permit from his owner to travel to other places and plantations?

Solomon mentions how, in order to travel from one place to another, he needed to have a written permit from his master. The pass was necessary because it was a protection both for the slave and for the master. White men could legally stop a black man on the road and ask him whether he was a slave or not. If he was a slave, he needed to present them with a permit attesting the fact that his master allowed him to leave his property. If the slave did not have that permit, then he could be kidnapped and sold again. Through the permits, the slave owners were also protecting themselves by making sure that their property was not stolen from them.

Why did slaves still try to escape even though they knew there was a slim chance they will be successful?

Solomon mentions numerous slaves who tried at one point in their lives to run away from their masters. Some of the slaves were caught before escaping. or even in the act of escaping. and they were punished severely by the masters. Other times, the slaves were found by white men patrolling and then taken back to the masters who would beat them and humiliate them. When Solomon analyzed such incidents, he sometimes reached the conclusion that some slaves did not run away to be free, but rather just to have a few days to rest from the grueling tasks they were made to do. For them, being beaten and tortured was worth it if that meant having a few days to relax. Others wanted to make a choice for themselves—to live their own life. Others genuinely thought they would make it to freedom. Regardless of the motivation and the level of confidence in the success of the mission, running away gave slaves a sense of power and purpose.

Why are slave narratives valuable?

First, many Northerners either did not know the particulars of how horrible slavery was or they pretended not to notice them. Slave narratives made them conspicuous and undeniable. Second, they provided evidence against the word of slavery's sympathizers, correcting problematic assumptions and misunderstandings. Third, they provided undeniable evidence of their writer's humanity, and, by extension, the humanity of all slaves. Northerners could move beyond thinking of them as sub-human and see within slaves the same things that motivated them . Fourth, they were crucial tools for abolitionists, and their authors made valuable speakers. Fifth, to the writer who penned such a story, it could be a remarkably cathartic, meaningful, and important thing to do.

What are the particular difficulties that slave women and girls face?

Slave women face all of the troubles that slave men do—hard labor, separation from family, cruel punishments—but they also face troubles particular to their sex. From the time a slave girl hits puberty—and especially if she is beautiful, as Harriet Jacobs notes—she becomes prey for the master and other white men. She is a sexual object and she cannot say no to a white man's advances. She is privy to lewd words and leers, molestation, and rape. She may become pregnant with his child and forced to bring it into the world. Then, she may be separated from her children and suffer from not being able to protect them from the trials and tribulations of slavery. She often faces the mistress's wrath, as do her children by the master.

Twelve Years a Slave Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Twelve Years a Slave is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why did Solomon carve his initials into the tin cups?

Solomon cut their initials into the tin cups they were given aboard ship.

With a small pocket knife that had not been taken from me, I began cutting the initials of my name upon the tin cup. The others immediately flocked round me, requesting me...

This question is far too involved for a short-answer. I suggest you begin by reading through GradeSaver's theme page for the unit.

What is the symbolism of the the sentence,

The "monsters" represent the white men who lured Solomon away.

Study Guide for Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave study guide contains a biography of Solomon Northup, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Twelve Years a Slave
• Twelve Years a Slave Summary
• Character List

Essays for Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.

• A Literary Analysis of Twelve Years a Slave

Lesson Plan for Twelve Years a Slave

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Twelve Years a Slave
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Twelve Years a Slave Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Twelve Years a Slave

• Introduction

12 Years A Slave - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

12 Years a Slave is a memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup, an African-American who was born free in New York state but kidnapped and sold into slavery. Essays could analyze the historical and societal context of the narrative, discuss its impact on the abolitionist movement, or compare it to other slave narratives and their portrayal of slavery. A vast selection of complimentary essay illustrations pertaining to 12 Years A Slave you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

12 Years a Slave Movie Critique

12 Years a Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an American African man who was taken from the North and sold into slavery. This movie accurately describes what slaves went through in their lives. It shows everything from the slaves being sold, and separated from their families to them being beaten. To what life was like on the plantations, and how they were treated. Since slaves were seen as property, they were sold as such. They […]

12 Years a Slave Summary

Watching 12 Years A Slave gave me a very realistic, but very shocking visual about everything that we have learned in class regarding slavery this semester and how slavery really was in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in America. Before watching the movie, I thought I had a good idea of what slavery was like up until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December of 1865, which officially ended it in the United States of America. However, what […]

Twelve Years a Slave Movie Analysis

Twelve Years a Slave (2013) Director: Steve McQueen Title of work: Twelve Years a Slave Date of release: October 18, 2013 Good films are not only a source of positive emotions, but are also a critical analysis of events that have occurred. "Twelve Years a Slave directed by Steve McQueen" is a great movie based on a true story. This films context make the audience think during and after the movie is over. McQueen depicts slavery on three levels, with […]

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Main Issues of 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup 2) Narrator: Author (Solomon Northup) Point of view: First person 3) Tone: determined Quote: After Solomon becomes a slave he gets some help from the others in which they say keep your head down if you want to survive with which he responds "I don't want to survive. I want to live"(Northup 71). This shows his determination because even if he has yet to become a slave he is determined to make it […]

My Impressions from 12 Years a Slave

Slavery was extremely important to America. I mean, it led to a civil war and it also lasted a very long time, looking back to 1619 through the 1800's, this is over 200 years. However, slavery is most important because we still struggle with its legacy today. The film, 12 Years a Slave, is aimed specifically at topical issues of slavery. The story really depicts the struggles African Americans were subjected to for these 12 years, the bondage of slavery […]

Who is Solomon Northup?

Solomon Northup was born in July 10, 1808 in Minerva, New York. His father, Mintus, was once a slave himself but was released into freedom due to the death of his former slave owner or "master". Solomon Northup and his brother, Joseph, grew up knowing freedom. Growing up, Solomon would help his father out on the farm. He also enjoyed reading and playing the violin. In 1829, at the age of 21, Solomon Northup married Anne Hampton on Christmas Day. […]

Solomon from 12 Years a Slave

12 years a slave book is a story of Solomon Northup who is a free black man, married and have 3 children who live in Saratoga Spring, New York. He's a talented carpenter and who can plays the violin for a living, until he met his kidnappers who lied, drugged, and sold him to a slavery. What makes Solomon northup's experience of slavery so different from others? Solomon background is started from his ancestors on his paternal side were slaves […]

12 Years a Slave: a Unique View on Slavery

Solomon Northup portrays an unique view to the narrative on slavery. He was born in New York as a free man. Northrop's father was a liberated slave, so while Northup knew of the horrors of slavery, he only knew the taste of freedom. In March of 1841, Solomon Northup agrees to join a circus as a fiddle player to make extra money for his family. While with the two men who recruited him into the circus, Abram Hamilton and Merrill […]

12 Years Slave Film Review

The motion picture opens with a gathering of slaves accepting direction on cutting sugar stick. A man sits lazily on a wagon of  pure sugar cane stick root, watching the men work. The scene moves to a gathering of shacks. The slaves are eating. Solomon Northup sees the dull juice of blackberries and it gives him an idea to make ink and a plume. Lamentably, the plan comes up short. The juice is too thin. Afterward, in the swarmed slave […]

The Greatness of 12 Years a Slave Movie

In 1853 Solomon Northup, an African-American born a free man, wrote his biography about how at the age of 33 he got kidnapped and separated from his wife and 3 children by two men he met who offered him lucrative work with a circus. Believing both men's words Northup followed them to Washington D.C. where after various stops to multiple saloons throughout the night Northup remembers getting ill with a severe headache and nausea. Shortly after leaving his room and […]

Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave

Whites have for years have argued that slavery was great for African Americans to be slaves because it civilized them, and they would be content within bondage. This was not the case, at least according to those who were held in bondage. The accounts of slavery are importantly known because of those who were emancipated or runaway slaves. In the novel, Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup composed a narrative about his life as a free man, and about his […]

Depiction of Slavery in Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave follows the narrative of Solomon Northup and his twelve-year experience being a free man then kidnapped to be turned into a slave. He expresses a different outlook into slavery since he had never lived it himself. Being brand new into slavery he is shocked at the horrible mistreatment that slaves endured. His father being a slave that was freed allowed Northup to have a family of his own. He was a free man robbed from his […]

12 Years of Slave: Significant Issues of the Film

The film 12 Years of Slaves is based on the autobiographical story of Solomon Northup. The film, annals the strenuous experiences of slavery and the dehumanizing effects of human oppression. This film portrayals the years of slavery withstood by Solomon Northup, an African American man who is a free citizen in New York. Inebriated from drinking, two men erroneously offers him work, he awakens in chains, before being quickly transported to the South to an existence of indentured servitude. The […]

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Twelve Years a Slave

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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-22

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Twelve Years a Slave opens with an excerpt from William Cowper’s 1785 blank verse “The Task.” Why do you think Solomon Northup chose these particular words for his epigraph? How does this epigraph support the abolitionist aims and thematic interests of Twelve Years a Slave ?

Following the widespread attention of both fictional slave narratives—such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin —and nonfictional slave narratives—such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave—Twelve Years a Slave quickly became a bestseller. Critics of abolitionism, however, scrutinized the book’s details for accuracy and veracity. Examine two to three rhetorical strategies Northup uses throughout Twelve Years a Slave to prove—and illustrate—that his narrative is truthful.

While the chronology and many of the major events in Steve McQueen’s 2013 film adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave remain true to Northup’s memoir , the film changes several details, combining characters, attributing one character’s words to another, and even—in some cases—fictionalizing moments. Analyze at least three changes between the original memoir and the 2013 film. Do you think these changes were necessary, or do you think they detracted from the impact of the book? 

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Twelve Years a Slave : Analyzing Slave Narratives

Engraving of Solomon Northup "in his plantation suit," circa 1853.

Wikimedia Commons

"Although often dismissed as mere antislavery propaganda, the widespread consumption of slave narratives in the nineteenth-century U.S. and Great Britain and their continuing prominence today testify to the power of these texts to provoke reflection and debate." —William L. Andrews, Professor of English, University of North Carolina

Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853 (to be referred to as Twelve Years a Slave ) is the focus of this lesson on analyzing messages in slave narratives. In this unique literary tradition, formerly enslaved men and women report what they experienced and witnessed during their enslavement. Slave narratives had a mission: to convert readers’ hearts and minds to the antislavery cause by revealing how slavery undermined and perverted the principal institutions upon which America was founded: representative democracy, Protestant Christianity, capitalism, and marriage and the family.

The corrupting influence of slavery on marriage and the family is a predominant theme in Northup’s narrative. In this lesson, students are asked to identify and analyze narrative passages that provide evidence for how slavery undermined and perverted marriage and the family. They will be challenged to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences using their prior knowledge, including knowledge of narratives’ antislavery mission.

Northup collaborated with a white ghostwriter, David Wilson . Students will read the preface and identify and analyze statements Wilson makes to prove the narrative is true. Students are encouraged to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences about Wilson’s purposes for writing the preface.

Guiding Questions

What does Solomon Northup’s narrative reveal about the relation between slavery and social institutions such as marriage and the family?

Why are slave narratives’ authenticity and truthfulness questioned?

What do slave narratives reveal about how history is recorded in the United States?

Learning Objectives

Describe the slave narrative tradition and evaluate its purpose.

Analyze how the relationships Northup describes explicitly illustrate or imply how slavery corrupted the social institutions of marriage and the family.

Analyze statements the ghostwriter makes to prove the narrative’s truth and infer why he made the statements.

Lesson Plan Details

Of the institutions that define the American identity, these come to mind:

• In the political sphere, Representative Democracy
• In the religious sphere, Protestant Christianity
• In the economic sphere, Capitalism
• In the social sphere, Marriage.

The fifth institution, however, may not be as readily apparent:

• Human Bondage or Chattel Slavery

Why? The institution of slavery threatened the nation’s dedication to each of the four other key institutions in our history.

More than any other literary form, the American slave narrative dramatized how slavery corrupted America’s greatest institutions and thereby threatened to destroy the very social, economic, religious, and political bedrock upon which the country was founded. Twelve Years a Slave , in particular, supports the antislavery argument that the institution of slavery undermined and perverted the institutions of marriage and the family.

Solomon Northup was a free black man who was kidnapped from his home in the North and sold into slavery in the South. His steadfast love for his wife and children fortified him to endure slavery and to devise a means to be rescued. Northup’s commitment to his family stands in stark contrast to behaviors he witnessed among slave owners. He saw them desecrate their marriage vows; he saw the natural bonds between enslaved parents and their children sundered for slaveholders’ profit; he saw enslaved women’s lives devastated by their owners’ sexual exploitation; and he witnessed the jealousy and violence of slave owners’ legal wives toward the enslaved women their husbands had extra-marital relationships with and often fathered enslaved children by.

Northup’s narrative is unique because most slave narratives were written by individuals who were born into slavery and escaped to freedom. Northup was a kidnap victim, not a fugitive. Moreover, his was a rarity among slave narratives because it was authored by a white ghostwriter, David Wilson. Wilson took the facts Northup provided him and rendered them into an “as told to the writer” narrative. Because Wilson penned the narrative credibility issues have been raised; however, scholars agree that Twelve Years a Slave is historically accurate and verifiable regarding Northup’s life before, during, and after his enslavement.

In the summer of 1853, Twelve Years a Slave was published in Auburn and Buffalo, New York, as well as in London, England. By 1856 it had sold 30,000 copies, a sales record rivaling that of Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative in its first five years of publication. In the fall of 2013, weeks after 12 Years a Slave, a major motion picture based on the narrative, was released to great acclaim, the narrative was on the New York Times Best Seller List. Its renewed popularity as a book and a film underscores how America’s greatest human tragedy, chattel slavery and the legacy of racism and discrimination, remain compelling themes for the American people.

For a framework for teaching this material, review the PDF/PowerPoint Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave , and Analyzing Slave Narratives . This presentation draws from the  Biography of Solomon Northup   and the longer resource essay, “ Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave , and the Slave Narrative Tradition ."

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.8. Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

• Power Point : Solomon Northup and  Twelve Years a Slave: How to Analyze Slave Narratives
• Solomon Northup’s  Twelve Years a Slave and the Slave Narrative Tradition
• Biography of Solomon Northup
• Analyzing the Text: Eliza Loses Her Children
• Analyzing the Text: Answer Sheet: Eliza
• Analyzing the Text: The Soul Murder of Patsey
• Analyzing the Text: Answer Sheet: Patsey
• Editor’s Preface
• Editor’s Preface: Responses for Discussion
• Editor’s Preface: Assessment
• Editor’s Preface: Assessment Answer Sheet
• Final Quiz Assessment
• Final Quiz Assessment: Answer Key

Note to Teachers: The complete text of Twelve Years a Slave can be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed digital archive Documenting the American South . First, read the " Introduction to the North American Slave Narrative ,” also on the site. In addition to readings excerpted for analysis activities below, the important readings are:

• pp. 17–27 (Chapter I)
• pp. 35–39 (drinking in Washington, D.C., discovering himself in chains)
• pp. 75–80 (arrival at the New Orleans slave market)
• pp. 89–99 (Ford and Northup’s early successes as a slave)
• pp. 105–117 (a fight with Tibeats and aftermath)
• pp. 162–163 (introduction to Epps)
• pp. 180–185 (life under Epps); pp.188–189 (Patsey)
• pp. 223–227 (Northup as slave driver)
• pp. 230–235 (foiled in writing a letter)
• pp. 312–318 (frustration with the case against Burch)
• pp. 319–321 (Northup family reunion)

These comprise 65 pages of the 336-page narrative.

View the brief trailer from 12 Years a Slave (2013) Link to film trailer here . An earlier, NEH-funded film based on Northup’s narrative and directed by Gordon Parks,  Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984) is also worthy of note. By being familiar with both, you can decide which one to use with your students.

Activity 1. Analyzing the Text: Eliza Loses Her Children

• Ask students: What is a slave narrative? Reinforce the correct answers and redefine.
• Show the short video trailer for 12 Years a Slave . Inquire about students’ prior knowledge: “Who has read Solomon Northup’s slave narrative?” or “Who has seen the movie 12 Years a Slave directed by Stephen McQueen or Solomon Northup’s Odyssey directed by Gordon Parks?” In the discussion make sure students understand the narrative’s storyline. (Time permitting, have students read as homework before the lesson the 65 pages in the narrative listed under Preparation and Resources.)
• Using “ Power Point : Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave , and Analyzing Slave Narratives ” which draws from the Biography and Background sections of this lesson and from the essay: " Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave and the Slave Narrative Tradition" give students a short (1–15 minute) background for the lesson.
• Divide the class into pairs and distribute “ Analyzing the Text: Eliza Loses Her Children .” Ask each pair to read and determine at least four ways the excerpt illustrates or implies how slavery undermined and perverted the institutions of marriage and the family.
• Challenge pairs to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences from their prior knowledge, especially 1) knowledge of slave narratives’ antislavery mission; and 2) knowledge of principles and tenets undergirding the institutions of marriage and the family. Stress that responses must be substantiated by evidence from the text.
• Review how to approach analysis of the text excerpt with the class. Let each student read silently and highlight relevant text. After reading the whole excerpt, have the pairs review their highlighted segments together. Ask “reading between the lines” probing questions to help them make inferences (see: page 4 of “ Analyzing the Text: Eliza Loses her Children. ”). Then respond by identifying four examples representing corruption of marriage and the family by the institution of slavery
• Ask several pairs of students to stand and present their responses to “Analyzing the Text Eliza Loses Her Children” and also to share other observations or inferences they made. Lead a discussion with the whole class referring to “ Analyzing the Text: Answer Sheet ."

Note to Teacher: The following excerpt, a graphic description of slave whipping, may not be suitable for all students. We recommend that teachers review carefully before assigning.

• Distribute “ Analyzing the Text: The Soul Murder of Patsey .” Advise students that the excerpt contains emotionally disturbing and graphically violent content.
• Inform students that they are to work independently to identify and analyze the text that conveys how slavery undermined and perverted the institutions of marriage and the family. Advise that they will need to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and to make inferences using their prior knowledge, especially their knowledge of slave narratives’ antislavery mission.

Activity 2. Editor's Preface

• Steps 1–4 are the same as for Activity 1
• Distribute the PDF, Editor’s Preface and have a student read this to the whole class. Ask students independently to underline the statements in the Editor’s Preface in which the editor is trying to convince the reader of the truthfulness of the narrative.
• Using the PDF, Activity 2. Editor’s Preface: Responses for Discussion , lead a discussion about the statements identified. Reinforce learning objective 3.
• Distribute the PDF, Activity 2. Editor’s Preface: Assessment . In this exercise, students will identify statements which are intended to convince the reader that the narrative is true.
• To assess student work, see the PDF, Activity 2. Editor’s Preface: Assessment Answer Sheet to Editor’s Preface.

In the event that teachers have implemented both Activity 1 and Activity 2, the quiz will enable them to assess student accomplishment of the learning outcomes for both activities. Distribute the quiz . Ask students to complete it.

• Students write a paper comparing and contrasting Northup’s narrative to that of Frederick Douglass and/or Harriet Jacobs or another individual, using the appropriate sections of William L. Andrews’s essay “Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave and the Slave Narrative Tradition ” as one of the reference documents.
• Students review and summarize contemporaneous newspaper articles about Northup’s efforts to obtain justice. Direct students to the EDSITEment Closer Reading blog entry " Searching for Solomon Northup in Chronicling America " for helpful suggestions about how to search in Chronicling America's database of historic digital newspapers. 
• Students compare and contrast interpretations of Solomon Northrup’s narrative in the two films: Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984), directed by Gordon Parks and 12 Years a Slave (2013), directed by Stephen McQueen. Remind them to be sure to indicate where the film(s) were faithful to the narrative and where they were not, and. using prior knowledge and reason, analyze why they think these departures from the Northup’s slave narrative may have been made.

Materials & Media

“twelve years a slave”: activity 1. analyzing the text: eliza loses her children, “twelve years a slave”: activity 1. analyzing the text: the soul murder of patsey, “twelve years a slave”: activity 1.1. analyzing the text: answer sheet: eliza, “twelve years a slave”: activity 1.2. analyzing the text: answer sheet: patsey, “twelve years a slave”: activity 2. editor's preface, “twelve years a slave”: activity 2. editor's preface answer sheet, “twelve years a slave”: activity 2. editor's preface: assessment, “twelve years a slave”: activity 2. editor's preface: responses for discussion, “twelve years a slave”: final assessment quiz, “twelve years a slave”: final quiz answer key, related on edsitement, harriet jacobs and elizabeth keckly: the material and emotional realities of childhood in slavery, slavery and the american founding: the "inconsistency not to be excused", frederick douglass's, “what to the slave is the fourth of july”, lesson 2: from courage to freedom: slavery's dehumanizing effects, twelve years a slave : was the case of solomon northup exceptional, harriet tubman and the underground railroad.

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12 Years a Slave

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Racism and Slavery

12 Years a Slave grapples with the racism that fuels slavery and Solomon Northup ’s suffering. The narrative illustrates how racism is an instrument for human wickedness—a justification for a slave owner to be unrelenting, cruel, and inhumane. 12 Years a Slave clearly points out that racism is a learned behavior, not an inherent understanding that people are born with. The overarching purpose of 12 Years a Slave is to reveal the heartbreaking realities of…

Truth and Justice

Although 12 Years a Slave commends telling the truth, considering it a sign of integrity and strength, the book also explores the complexity involved in telling the truth in nineteenth-century America. Racism means that truth coming from a slave is deemed worthless, limiting a slave’s ability to seek justice. Further, telling the truth can be dangerous or deadly for an innocent person in this toxic environment. In this case, Solomon Northup maintains, it is appropriate…

12 Years a Slave centers on the twelve years of agony that author and protagonist Solomon Northup spent as a slave in Louisiana, completely cut off from his family. Although Solomon’s family appears very little throughout the narrative, family plays a key role in Solomon’s experiences. The narrative points out that the concept of family is broader than being related by blood or marriage. Instead, family encompasses those who show one another love, compassion, and…

Christianity

Throughout 12 Years a Slave , Solomon Northup asserts that God loves all of his people, regardless of race. The inherent equality among men in God’s eyes means that Christianity is a source of comfort and strength for the slaves, as well as a way to understand their circumstances. 12 Years a Slave also reveals the hypocritical underbelly of Christianity in the American South, showing the way that Christianity can be terribly manipulated into a…

The Power of Music

In 12 Years a Slave , author and protagonist Solomon Northup highlights how his violin brought him brief but treasured moments of joy and comfort in the midst of otherwise-horrific situations. He even attributes his physical survival under his most brutal master, Edwin Epps , to his violin. However, Solomon also reveals how the scant joy in his life, music, was perverted by slave dealers and owners.

In the opening pages of his narrative, Solomon…

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Book Review — A Literary Analysis of Twelve Years a Slave

A Literary Analysis of Twelve Years a Slave

• Categories: Abolitionism Book Review

About this sample

Words: 860 |

Published: Oct 26, 2018

Words: 860 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Northup, S. (1853). Twelve Years a Slave. Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller Publishers.
• Foner, P. S. (2012). 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. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble.
• Eakin, S. (1998). Solving Solomon Northup: Uncovering the Story behind Twelve Years a Slave. LSU Press.
• Hennessy, K. M. (2013). Slavery, Freedom, and Memory in Twenty-First Century America. American Studies, 52(4), 97-114.
• Melish, J. H. (2014). Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860. Cornell University Press.
• Bassett, J. S. (2007). Solomon Northup's Odyssey: Twelve Years a Slave. In S. T. Ormond (Ed.), Slavery and Emancipation (pp. 45-66). Pearson Longman.
• Farrow, A., Lang, J. E., & Frank, S. (2013). Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. Random House.
• Hinks, P. P., & McKivigan, J. R. (Eds.). (2011). Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave. ABC-CLIO.
• Stauffer, J. (2008). Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Twelve.
• McQueen, S. (Director). (2013). 12 Years a Slave [Film]. Regency Enterprises.

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