Physical And Emotional Experiences In Solomon Northup's 12 Years A Slave

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Solomon Northup succinctly details his excruciating physical and emotional experiences in his memoir 12 Years A Slave. As he spares very few details in his account of horrific experience, his novel truly expresses a variety of aspects of American Chattel Slavery. The film adaptation that emerged from this memoir has had many industrial accolades and has been hailed by many as a cinematic masterpiece. While the film is poignant and effective in illustrating the message of Northup’s narrative, it also contains a few pitfalls resulting in a failure to truly capture the essence of the book. Solomon Northup’s memoir is voluminous with details on his experiences and as a result, the reader has the ability to understand a variety of viewpoints and …show more content…

Most were highly brutal while only a handful had a relatively kinder disposition to their slaves. This variation is highlighted between three central characters in Northup’s Narrative. The first is Ford, who treats Solomon with relative respect. Even though Ford still participates in the institution of slavery, Northup deems him to be a good Christian man. Other masters in Northup’s experience include Tibeats, who harms Solomon to the point of near death. The difference between these two characters is distinct. Ford commends Northup on his ingenuity and ability to ship goods via the waterway. Tibeats, on the other hand, brutally harms Northup because he felt outsmarted when Northup built a shed in a resourceful manner. Finally, Northup is enslaved to Epps who shows sign of mental instability and anger. The later two antagonists in Solomon’s story show true anger while all three show the firm belief that owning slaves is right and justifiable. The opposite viewpoint on slavery is only seen with the Canadian named Bass and his abolitionist viewpoints. This spectrum of opinion is something that rounds out Northup’s memoir and helps to effectively capture slavery early to mid Nineteenth

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