Inaccuracies, 12 Years A Slave

Except for a few minor inaccuracies, 12 Years A Slave is very historically accurate in its portrayal of the characters and events Solomon Northup faced during his journey of serving as a slave. At the beginning of this movie the phrase, “based on a true story” was depicted. Because the film as a whole portrayed Solomon’s true journey as a slave, one may say the movie is genuinely based on true events and historically accurate. The movie began as though there were flashbacks to events that took place during Solomon’s twelve years as a slave, then it proceeded to depict what his life consisted of before the abduction. After Solomon regained freedom, he composed all of the events and people encountered during his slave days and wrote a memoir in which the movie was inspired by (Wikipedia). The movie strongly portrayed Solomon’s story and it brought attention to some of the
In the movie Solomon is displayed as a free black man with a wife, Anne, and two children Margaret and Alonzo; however, in actuality Solomon and Anne had three children (biography). The film proceeded to “omit Elizabeth” the third child of Solomon and Anne Northup (historyvshollywood). According to both the film and the memoir, Solomon and two other black men, Robert and Arthur, planned to take over the ship; however, the way Robert was killed in the movie was not accurate. In the film Robert was stabbed after defending Eliza, but that wasn’t the case, he actually came down with smallpox which resulting in death (HistoryvsHollywood). This inaccuracy can also be backed up with the synopsis of the memoir on wikipedia. Another minor inaccuracy portrayed in this film was the scene in which Patsey begged Solomon to end her life; however this did not take place, it was a misunderstood comprehension of the part in Solomon’s book that discussed his relation with Patsey that the filmmakers