12 Years A Slave Essay

Solomon Northup's "12 years a Slave" is based on the author's life story as a free man in the pre-civil North and was abducted and sold into slavery in the south. Northup was the son of a liberated slave, therefore making him a free man from birth. He lived and worked in Upstate New York, where he worked as a laborer and a greatly talented violin player. He was deceived into travelling with two con men to Washington D.C who wanted to sell him as a slave to the south. He was led to believe that he was going to play the fiddle at a circus but instead was drugged and sold into slavery at the Red River region in Louisiana. For 12 consequent years he served as slave to different masters. Most of his years as a slave was spent under the ownership of a slaver named Edwin Epps. The movie shows us three significant parts of Solomon Northup's life. it starts with Northup as a free man. Born as a free man in 1808, he had privileges that not a lot of colored people had. He could read and write, he learned how to play the violin, which would later help him when he is enslaved. When he turned 21, he got
It shows Solomon under the slaver know as James Burch. The slaves under James Burch are called "Burch’s gang". When Solomon realizes that his freedom is gone, he tries to explain to Burch that he is a free man, instead he gets beat up and threatened to be killed if he ever mentions his being a free man ever again. Solomon is then put with the rest of the slaves, "Burch's gang", then he realizes how hopeless his situation is. He is then transported to New Orleans. This is where one of Burchs's associates, Theophilus Freeman, changes Solomon's name to Platt. His name is changed with the aim of erasing his past and giving him a new identity. Solomon falls ill with smallpox and cannot be sold, but recovers later and is sold with a "nigger girl" named Eliza, to a slaver named William