12 Years A Slave Themes

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The film 12 Years a Slave and the slave narrative The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass are two stories about two different slave men. In both Solomon Northup’s story and Frederick Douglass’ story, music is also shown as a way of dehumanizing the characters through forced performance and the robbing of one’s passion, as well as humanizing them by the expression of emotion. Music is shown as a theme of struggle and growth, a form of expression, conveying different types of emotions and a way that connects the slaves. In the beginning of the film, 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup is shown playing the violin at a predominantly white party for the dancing guests. This scene is before Solmon is kidnapped to be a slave and Solomon is Singing this song is possibly to pass the time and in attempt to distract the fellow slaves from the terrible ordeal that is their enslaved life. There is a power that the slaves have from expressing emotion through music and singing. Slaves normally sing to express the feelings that they are not allowed to outwardly show or articulate to the whites in control around them because they are powerless and not considered human. The slaves on the farms and plantations use singing while working to show, feeling of pain and to release anguish while working in the fields. Douglass talks about how slaves “would sing, as a chorus, to words which would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves” (Douglass, 29). The meaning behind the songs they would sing in the fields and in their daily lives had meaning behind them that no one could truly understand if they were not slaves themselves. An interesting scene in 12 Years a Slave is when one of the white men on the plantation sing “Run N**** Run” to the slaves while the slaves are doing their work. This scene is quite strange and the way he sings is quite menacing because this man is taking singing; something that the slaves do normally during work, and putting a different meaning to the song and what he’s doing by singing

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