Amistad Analysis

The movie Amistad is a movie about an illegal slave ship. They left Havana on June 28th. Their destination was Puerto Principle, which was a little Cuban town. On the ship at this moment were five whites, a Spanish cook, a black cabin boy, and fifty three Africans. Upon the ship, there is a successful slave rebellion lead by Cinque after he finds a nail and frees himself from his manacles. There is a full-on war upon the ship, with the Africans killing any and every man they can get their hands on. They leave two survivors so that they can be sailed back home. However, the men trick them and change sailing directions at night until the American Navy intercept them. Immediately, the remaining fifty-three African men are escorted off the ship

It was brutal, inhumane, and incredibly hard to watch. It was true and depicted accurately that they were chained together in dungeons like areas, not given any more than five square feet of personal space. They were living in their own bodily fluids and vomit. There were so many people in that ship that it is said there was not enough oxygen to light a lighter under there. If any African looked a little sick, they were refused food. If women gave birth while on the ship, they usually died and their newborn abbies were then thrown over board. These men and women would argue over their tiny rations of food. They would fight and scream and cry over being hungry and they would get ignored. They were stripped naked and whipped for no reason, forced to whip each other even. Men, women, and children were stripped naked and hosed down in ice cold water. When it was realized that they did not have enough provisions to keep all the slaves alive they literally tied chains around them and then to a net full of rocks. They would then toss them over board. These human beings would watch helplessly as their fellow people would fall one by one into the

I loved the movie, and I loved how real it was. They did not shy away from the horrors that occurred during that time. It was raw, it was real, and it was upsetting. To which it should be! Slavery and slave transportation is not and never will be an easy topic to speak on, but people really need to see these things. We need to know the awful things those men and women went through so that we can make sure it never happens again. This movie did an excellent job of depicting the violence and heartbreak and sorrow. When one of their own died, I felt sorrow in my heart with them. I was so connected to that movie that when it ended I didn’t know what to do. The movie Amistad makes you feel every emotion the characters on screen feel. It accomplishes the goal they set out to do; which is show everyone the horrors of our past, but to also show that there were people that cared enough to make the right choice, even if it was not easy. The young lawyer did this when he decided to take the case. He knew he would lose clients, and he knew that he would probably be hated but he did it because it was the right thing to do and I love that about the movie