The Purpose Of 12 Years A Slave

The Author’s Purpose in Writing the Book In the novel 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup depicts his experiences of living the life of a free African American to becoming a slave for twelve years. He gives his primary perspective on how harsh the conditions of slavery were in the mid 1800s through the method of writing a book. To be more specific, the story generally lapsed between the years of 1841- 1853. The story Solomon tells is more of new information as not many slaves were taken into slavery when they were free men. This book focuses mostly on the subject of slavery as it is told from the perspective of a former slave. Northup wrote this book in order to inform his audience of the bitterness of slavery. He wanted to highlight
His experiences are primary sources since Solomon was there to have a first hand encounter of what happened. All of the documents in this book are considered primary sources as they are copies of the originals. The three documents given were used to go further in depth about a certain topic being introduced. For example, Solomon went on about how the act of recovering free citizens from slavery was passed while giving a reference to a part of the appendix. The document provided in the appendix with the corresponding event depicts the details and exact guidelines to the act. The other two documents given were about the memorial of Anne and the papers acknowledging Northup’s freedom after being a slave for twelve
The fact that it was told from first person allows the reader to feel the tense emotions involved within the novel. Along with that, it was written as a narrative which presented the information effectively with references to certain dates and times. It gave a primary experience of the bleak events of slavery. Solomon wrote this book giving information that something like a textbook wouldn’t be able to give since history can be somewhat curved through secondary sources. I thought that there were some minor gaps in the story, although I don’t think it really affects the story too much. I would assume that the gaps in Solomon’s twelve year experience as a slave were just typical days working on the field. He probably left those gaps out to focus on the more important encounters. I honestly thought that having the gaps was a good idea because filling in the gaps would most likely make the story seem bland and hard to understand. Solomon incorporated many photos to illustrate certain events that were significant. I thought it effectively portrayed the events which ultimately would give the reader a much better image of how this time period was. He would place them either on the same page or the page after the event was described, as well as give a caption with the image. They gave the reader a physical image to visualize what is happening rather than