Book review for 12 years a slave

BOOK REVIEW: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE
Name
Course
Date

BOOK REVIEW: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE
Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave is the blood-curdling true story of Solomon uprooted from freedom in upstate New York by dubious slave traders who dupe him to travel with them to Washington DC where they drug him and sell him into slavery. It outlines the sickening plight of slaves in the bayous of the Louisiana and New Orleans describing in vivid detail the daily routine of hard, unrelenting labor, whippings for very puny mistakes, short nights and extremely long days with little to no food. The story itself is told from a first person perspective of Solomon, but it is recorded by David Wilson, a white legislator, and lawyer who claimed to have recorded the history “from Solomon’s lips.”
Before he was enslaved, Solomon was born in Minerva, New York to a family enslaved but later freed by the Northup Family. And Solomon enjoyed close to thirty odd years of freedom, got married to Ann, and worked as a raftsman in the upstate waterways of New York. He also developed a talent for fiddle playing and established quite a reputation in that field. It was his prowess in music that later immersed him into trouble; it was used by the two men who approached him to lure him to travel with them to Washington where they then spiked his drink, disorienting him and later selling him to the slave trader James H Burch. Burch brutally whips Solomon with a cat ‘o’ nine tails and a whipping board for asserting his freedom.

He is later on sold to the south where he works first on a lumber mill then on a cotton farm. He whips his master John Tibeats, “until my arms ache’s” for trying to beat him up for some offense. Tibeats later attempts to attack Northup with a hatchet, but Northup once more defeats him and flees into the “Great Percoudrie swamp” chased by hounds. He avoids death by alligators and water moccasins and goes to his former master where he is protected.
The writer, in the first few chapters of the book, speaks in great detail of the way black people are treated. Starting from the way the two men duped Solomon into slavery, his unjust punishment in the slave trading center in Washington at the hands of Burch and even the sad story of Eliza, a mother who was about to embark on the harrowing journey of slavery, after a life of ease in Berry’s household. She pitied her children Emily and Randall who would be taken away from her; she would be heart-broken. The author mentions her death up to the red river due to despair. The author brings out the misery of the slaves, being shackled to walls, being whipped for hours with brutality for no apparent reason and left to sleep on the cold hard floors of slave pens. This troubling description mingled with the shocking fact that slave trade was a weighing and pricing of a human being as if they were objects with no subjective consciousness. The author points out to the way the whites viewed the black race, as objects even below the consideration given to animals. The fact that they could dupe them into slavery without the slightest of remorse and hold them in pens in worse conditions than horse stables goes to show the whites dire lack of even basic acknowledgment of blacks as human beings with lives, dreams, and rights.
This occurrence is further seen in the way Solomon is treated when he begins his years of slavery in William Ford’s lumber mill. Despite his ingenious capabilities in his work which provides greater profits to his master, he is still sold, depicting the way whites considered slaves unworthy of even appreciation for work well done. In Edwin Epps cotton plantation, the same approach to slave work efforts is presented, this time with an even more severe lack of consideration. If a slave was to pick a little more cotton than they usually did, then they are expected to harvest a higher amount the next day or risk getting whipped. If a slave didn’t pick their standard rate in weight, then whippings would descend upon them. Such hard-line, barbaric and saddening approach to slave work output shows how microscopic a consideration Whites had for the blacks, and it points to a deeper problem which somehow makes whites consider themselves a superior race compared to blacks. However, breaking down to specifics and the truth of the matter is that black or white, we are all human. Our thought processes are similar, our ambitions our dreams our capabilities are all the same. It’s only a matter of resources and opportunity. Give a black child, and a white child the same opportunities and the same amount of resources and they will produce results equally. It is only that most of the time one race holds all the advantages regarding opportunity, resources, and even motivation and then blaming the other race for being lazy and underachieving or even labeling them criminal.
The another theme that is depicted in the narrative is on trust. Northup believes the two white men who offer him a job traveling with a band and also getting a lucrative pay for his efforts. Solomon believes them and ends up being sold into slavery. Eliza also put her trust in her mistress’s husband, Mr. Brooks and he hoodwinks her into thinking that they were headed to Washington to obtain the papers proclaiming her freedom. She dressed herself and her daughter nicely for the occasion only to realize that the papers she would receive would only condemn her into slavery at the hands of Burch. In yet another incident, Solomon confides his intent to send a letter home to his family to come and rescue him, to a white field-laborer who then sells him out to Epps. The recurring theme is a lack of trustworthiness on the part of the Whites and a blind trusting faith on the part of the blacks. The black trust their fellow white counterparts, believing that they are noble enough, being the superior race they consider themselves to be, to have respect for the lives entrusted into their hands. But the white characters in the various instances go ahead and shatter the trust afforded them and insulted the honesty of the blacks in question. These incidents portray how degraded a level the whites possessed in the primary indicator of our humanity, the act of being trustworthy to those under you.7 And the racial disparity will be an ever present issue as long as one race cannot be trusted to have respect for the discretions of the other race.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.
Clarke, James. 2013. “Solomon Northup: The Complete Story Of The Author Of Twelve Years A Slave.” Choice Reviews Online 51 (05): 51-2837-51-2837. doi:10.5860/choice.51-2837.
C, Saxton. 2016. “Twelve Years A Slave (1859)”. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/twelve-years-a-slave-1859.
Horn, Patrick. 2004. “Summary Of Twelve Years A Slave: Narrative Of Solomon Northup, A Citizen Of New-York, Kidnapped In Washington City In 1841, And Rescued In 1853”. Docsouth.Unc.Edu. “http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/summary.”
Northup, Solomon, Sue L Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. 1968. Twelve Years A Slave. 1st ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
“Solomon Northup Biography.” 2016. Biography.Com. http://www.biography.com/people/solomon-northup-21333433.