12 Years A Slave--- Human Relation and his Courage “To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair." These words were said in 1940 by a bravery person called Chaplin who made a speech about freedom. The witticism is connected to the main character in the novel called 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup. He wrote up about his real life in 1853. It is true that relationships are part of his identity give him strength. For one thing, the relationship between Solomon and white people who are in the Northern States. In the second place, he never forgets himself such as his position and family in the Northern States. Last, around people, who are in the Southern States, cooperate him. First of all, his connection with people who are in the Northern …show more content…
He says, “my ancestors on the paternal side were slaves in Rhode Island. –On the death of this gentleman, which must have occurred some fifty years ago, my father became free, having been emancipated by a direction in his will”(Northup 5). It proves him to inherit his spirit from his father because he knows how his father leads a tough life and how glad his father realizes when he converts free. Also, the experience makes him keep having the strong feeling that he tries to escape from the situation of the slave. Next, when Herny B. Northup, a white attorney in the Northern States, comes and identifies Solomon for helping. At the time he says, “I heard the words, ‘the says Solomon Northup,’ and ‘the deponent further says,’ and ‘free citizen of New-York,’ repeated frequently” (94). The occurrence is recognized that he has a position in the Northern States because if he does not be a high position person, Herny may not perceive him. Furthermore, he can keep his stable spirit the reason why his relationship with Henry. He tries to write a letter to Herny and wait for a long time so it means in his mind, he most trusts Herny that he rescue Solomon and this indicates, he can …show more content…
Firstly, when he is caught to be a slave by Burch, he says, “I asserted, aloud and boldly, that I was a freeman- a resident of Saratoga, where I had a wife and children” (12). It shows the relationship between him and his family and in addition, he does not fail to remember who he is because he really most loves and believes them so their memories make him perceptional that he wants to return his house. Later on, when he goes to bed in his owner’s house, he is thinking about his family and he says, “my thoughts, as usual, wandered back to my wife and children. The consciousness of my real situation; the hopelessness of any effort to escape through the wide forests of Avoyelles, pressed heavily upon me, yet my heart was at home in Saratoga” (29). He makes himself rousing by his family that he tries to go back to his home because he has most important people in his life and the recollections of his wife and children make him that he never gives up to turn a free man from a slave. Third, even so he is caught to be a slave, he still admits there is an escape hatch. He says, “I was heart sick and discouraged. Thoughts of my family, of my life and children, continually occupied my mind. – Still my spirit was not broken. I indulged the anticipation of escape, and that speedily. It was impossible, I reasoned, that men could be so unjust as to detain me as a slave, when the truth of my was known” (14). It shows his
Most people assume that friendships stay the same from when they first met till years later. However, in The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox addressed that this is not the case through Jessie’s friendships with Benjamin Stout, Clay Purvis and Ras. She illustrates how these different characters relationships with Jessie developed as the story unfolds. Jessie, who is abducted by the crew of a slaving ship to play his fife for the slaves to make them dance and stay healthy, undergoing this adventure, he gained a valuable insight into a life involved in slavery. The theme of friendship as seen through the relationships between the characters in this book developed the story as Jessie’s friendship with them changed.
In Solomon Northup’s memoir, Twelve Years A Slave, he depicts the lives of African Americans living in the North as extremely painful and unjust. Additionally, they faced many hardships everyday of their lives. For one, they were stripped of their identities, loved ones, and most importantly their freedom. To illustrate this, Northup says, “He denied that I was free, and with an emphatic oath, declared that I came from Georgia” (20). This quote discusses the point in which Northup was kidnapped, and how he was ultimately robbed of his freedom, as well as his identity. Furthermore, not only were his captors cruel and repulsive, so was the way in which they treated African Americans. For instance, Northup states, “…Freeman, out of patience, tore Emily from her mother by main force, the two clinging to each other with all their might” (50). In this example, a mother is being parted from her child despite her cries and supplications, the slave owner
The majority of the information in this novel has to do with Solomon’s own experiences. As a slave, Northup was cut off from sources of other news of the nation. The ...
Slavery consisted of numerous inhumane horrors completed to make its victims feel desolated and helpless. Many inescapable of these horrors of slavery are conveyed in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The entire prospect of the duration of the story is to plan an escape from the excruciating conditions awaiting Douglass as a slave. When his escape is finally executed, unpredictable emotions and thoughts overwhelm him. Within the conclusion of his narrative (shown in the given passage), Frederick Douglass uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to portray such states of mind he felt after escaping slavery: relief, loneliness, and paranoia.
Learning and knowledge make all the difference in the world, as Frederick Douglass proves by changing himself from another man's slave to a widely respected writer. A person is not necessarily what others label him; the self is completely independent, and through learning can move proverbial mountains. The main focus of this essay is on the lives of the American Slaves, and their treatment by their masters. The brutality brought upon the slaves by their holders was cruel, and almost sadistic. These examples will cite how the nature of Douglass's thoughts and the level of his understanding changed, and his method of proving the evilness of slavery went from visual descriptions of brutality to more philosophical arguments about its wrongness.
We see from this passage that Solomon is a loving devoted husband and father. He understands the relationship between a father and his children. Solomon appears through this writings to have been a good father.
Despite being a slave, he kept strong and eventually broke the chain of society. However, Fredrick Douglass experienced great “insecurity” and “loneliness” with his new freedom, and was upon a new “hunting-ground.” His new freedom brought other devastating factors, being a new state without any friends, which caused his loneliness. In this new state, he grew insecure because he was in a new danger zone where at any time his freedom could be rejected. With new freedom comes new obstacles, which are described in the diction of Fredrick Douglass.
In her essay, “Loopholes of Resistance,” Michelle Burnham argues that “Aunt Marthy’s garret does not offer a retreat from the oppressive conditions of slavery – as, one might argue, the communal life in Aunt Marthy’s house does – so much as it enacts a repetition of them…[Thus] Harriet Jacobs escapes reigning discourses in structures only in the very process of affirming them” (289). In order to support this, one must first agree that Aunt Marthy’s house provides a retreat from slavery. I do not. Burnham seems to view the life inside Aunt Marthy’s house as one outside of and apart from slavery where family structure can exist, the mind can find some rest, comfort can be given, and a sense of peace and humanity can be achieved. In contrast, Burnham views the garret as a physical embodiment of the horrors of slavery, a place where family can only dream about being together, the mind is subjected to psychological warfare, comfort is non-existent, and only the fear and apprehension of inhumanity can be found. It is true that Aunt Marthy’s house paints and entirely different, much less severe, picture of slavery than that of the garret, but still, it is a picture of slavery differing only in that it temporarily masks the harsh realities of slavery whereas the garret openly portrays them. The garret’s close proximity to the house is symbolic of the ever-lurking presence of slavery and its power to break down and destroy families and lives until there is nothing left. Throughout her novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents these and several other structures that suggest a possible retreat from slavery, may appear from the outside to provide such a retreat, but ideally never can. Among these structures are religion, literacy, family, self, and freedom.
He is constantly beaten by his master, so he is sent to Covey, who fixes slaves that act up. Covey is an evil man and beats Douglas countless numbers of times. Douglas, loses hope in learning again and suffers depression again as well. He learns of a secret route which will allow him to escape north and gain his freedom, but before that Douglas fights with Covey and wins. He is not beaten by Covey after his fight with him. “The dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute” (MLA). This goes to testify that although Douglas knows how to rea, write, and speak he still does not have his freedom. It wasn’t easy even after he had become educated, showing the struggle never ends for a slave.
The topic of slavery in the United States has always been controversial, as many people living in the South were supportive of it and many people living in the North were against it. Even though it was abolished by the Civil War before the start of the 20th century, there are still different views on the subject today. Written in 1853, the book Twelve Years a Slave is a first person account of what it was like for Solomon Northup to be taken captive from his free life in the North and sold to a plantation as a slave in the South, and his struggle to regain his freedom. Through writing about themes of namelessness, inhumanity, suffering, distrust, defiance, and the desire for freedom, Northup was able to expose the experiences and realities of slavery.
In Solomon Northup’s narrative, 12 years a slave, he shares a story of the horrors of his past that was a lifelong reality to many African Americans throughout American history. Northup, being a free man of Saratoga, New York, was stripped of his freedom and sold ‘down the river’ to the Bayou Boeuf of Louisiana and was bound to slavery for twelve years. Along with recounting the gruesome hardships and labor that he had to endure, Northup also gives detailed accounts of the lives of fellow slaves that he comes across, primarily, women. Northup’s narrative allows readers to see that the hardships that slave women experienced by far surpassed anything that a slave man could endure. Stripped of their families, beaten relentlessly and forever victims
Frederick Douglass quickly noticed if he wanted a chance of being free he needed to do something about it. He took action and began to fight back against his master. When Mr. Covey tried to whip him, Douglass refused to let him. Mr. Covey wouldn’t tolerate this kind of behavior. This resulted in a fight between the two. This confrontation concluded with Frederick winning.. Mr. Covey wanted to keep his reputation of being a slave breaker so he let Douglass go and never said a word about it again. Frederick was also never whipped again after the fight “it rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood” (pg 43). The use of metaphors comparing the feelings of freedom to embers rekindling deepens the reader's understanding and creates a feeling of sensory to help the reader experience the words better. This small feeling of freedom and manhood only made him want it more. After Douglass was accused of trying to run away, he was sent to jail. In this prison, his thoughts were overwhelming. He was alone and thought the possibility of freedom was gone. Yet being the mental hero he was he still desired freedom “it was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a stone prison” (pg 55). Being imprisoned did not stop him at all. It took Douglass mental and physical heroism to overcome all of the obstacles in his life. Without his courage and
When living sometimes we are faced with difficult decisions that affect our friendships. If you knew you were in a jam, what would you do? Who would you run to? Despite the greasers’ reputation as heartless young criminals, they live by a specific code of friendship and honour. In the novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, there are many instances in which the gang members make selfless choices by putting the needs of others ahead of their own. Three examples are, when the gang has each other’s back, Johnny and Ponyboy’s friendship, and Dally risking his life for Johnny.
His work is filled with grammatical errors that often times distract the reader from the strong and essential message of the literature. One of his most fatal flaws is refusal to disclose his escape from slavery. He only briefly mentions his departure and states it was a long and hard journey. He refuses to explain his escape to cause slaveholders to suffer from a lack of knowledge of their weaknesses and inadequacies. He also does not want to prevent the freeing of other slaves by disclosing of their method of escape to their masters. His reasoning is understandable, yet it also takes away from the suspense that was built by waiting for his great escape to freedom. He also abruptly mentions his fiancée once he arrives in New York. The reader does not receive any warning or knowledge about her until their union. He informs the reader that she was a free woman from Baltimore, which raises questions about how they meet and communicated through his life as a slave. Overall, his few confusions and errors do not diminish the effectiveness of his
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.