12 Years A Slave By Soloman Northup

12 Years a Slave Film Analysis

12 Years a Slave, a film narrated by Soloman Northup, a free black during the 19th century, who was later kidnapped and placed into slavery. One day in 1841, in Saratoga New York, where he had lived, he was tricked and captured by two white men, Merill Brown and Abram Hamilton. He was tricked into thinking he was going to perform at a circus in Washington DC, and later was drugged. He was then sold into slavery in Louisiana. He didn’t know why this had happened since he was after all, supposed to be a free man. This film shows us Soloman’s life from being born as a free man, to being captured for twelve years, to being free again. Before being captured, Soloman lived a good life. In fact, he lived a lot better

Like mentioned before, he was a free man, and a normal man. He was lied to, so he had no idea what was going on when he was drugged. He did not understand why he was captured, and chained up. Soloman was clueless. Later, he puts it all together and realizes that he is being sold into slavery. He still does not understand why since he was supposed to be safe from that. One of the many reasons that Soloman Northup was kidnapped, was simply because of money. Although it is not said in the film, we can assume that it is one of the reasons he was taken. For instance, it’s a lot cheaper for the white men who took Soloman. If a slave is kidnapped, and not payed for, and then later sold to a master, money is being made. In the end, the white men who took him would be making profit from taking an innocent free man. They treated him, and all the other slaves as objects, and not people. People are not worth

When Soloman was free again, he filed charges against Merill Brown and Abram Hamilton, the men who kidnapped him. Solomon did not know that the men who had kidnapped him were not evil southern slavers, but instead they were from Amsterdam, NY. Solomon was not alone in filing these charges, he had help from many of his friends. These charges that were filed were dropped by the District Attorney. What this tells us about race relations in upstate New York, and basically the entire nation is no one would listen to a black person. In this case, it was more than just one black person filing the charges. If a black man said something, and the white man said something else, they would always pick sides with the white man. Just like in this case, no one listened to Solomon and his friends. Honestly, the white men really couldn’t have cared less. They took the white man's word, and completely overruled the charges filed. This shows us that white men had more power and say than any black man during this time