12 Years A Slave Sparknotes

12 Years a Slave is a movie about the memoirs of a free man turned a slave. His name was Solomon Northup, a black man born free, who lived happily with his family until one day he was tricked, kidnapped and sent to a plantation down in Louisiana. Enough movies about slavery in America have been made that you’d think they would prepare you for the cruelty and misfortune that this poor man endured in this movie but they don’t. Northup was hoodwinked, drugged and forcefully taken away from his family and the happy life he used to know. The movie is set in 1841 antebellum America with the majority of the movie taking place in the south which in slavery times was the biggest advocator of the heinous practice. It’s historically accurate in that African Americans were able to live as free as they hoped to be a start a new life with some semblance of equality and rights.
Parker. They depicted the opposite mindset of the white people in the South, the people who opposed slavery and would help slaves escape by letting the slaves use their house as safe houses, and advocates for them when they saw they were being wrongfully done. Bass was a laborer who for a period of time worked on the plantation and witnessed how harsh Epps was to his slaves. He openly objected it and the ideals of slavery to Epps and spoke about how he felt. Although Epps openly laughed at Bass and considered his opinions to be harmless, it was a true testament to how many white people felt about slavery and the status of African people in America. Bass was a key element in Northup’s eventual freedom. He agreed to help him get his letter up to New York; the letter ended up with Mr. Parker, a shopkeeper back where Solomon used to live. Mr. Parker showed up to Solomon’s plantation and after he was questioned and his story matched up, he was free