12 Years a Slave Themes

The pain and exclaim experienced by Solomon Northrup in his 12 years of thrall, like the millions of other slaves who were kidnapped in Africa and sold across the U. S. , is a tragic excopious of the pain one society stomach inflict upon other group of people. The movie 12 Years A Slave graphically portrays the horrors of thrall in America, and demonstrates the shame of the system, using the incredible irony in the story of Solomon Northrup. Since he had a dpcu workforcet that say he was a free black man, he was set by others as a pest man, but afterwards he was kidnapped he was considered correctty, like an animal.There was no change in Solomon himself as a person only a corrupt system decl atomic number 18d that he could now be owned as nothing said otherwise. Only a paper could take away your earthly c oncern. Additionally, the slave know and traders, including Solomon Northrups, felt that they did not just reach the right to treat their slaves however they liked, t hey also claimed they had the right to, regular(a) more simply, own their buster man. And by decree of the American g overnment, they were fully at liberty to do so.Both examples point to a major theme of the movie, and applies to the slavery system that was in existence all over the Western world de benignantization. The black slaves who were abused and exploited by the American policy of slavery had their humanity stripped away from them, and were considered the homogeneous as any other property of the owner. In contrast, the slave owners who considered fellow humans their own property and whom they could abuse at their leisure had their ideas of justice led so astray by the permitting of slavery that they seemed to lack grassroots human qualities themselves, including compassion and a sense of reason.The plight of the slaves is summed up perfectly when a fellow slave tells Solomon Northrup, after throwing the body of another slave into the ocean, that he was offend off dea d. It is quite astounding that such young men and women felt that their trump plectron was to die, instead of being faced with the horrors they did daily. Although, it can appear quite reasonable, as slaves were most often natural on a grove, and had no hope of dying free. They could not establish any goals for themselves, as their ideal bread and butter was forced to be devoted to fulfilling the needs of their masters.This is quite like the lives of many animals, and not humans. Animals are born and try to maintain their existence, but establishing goals to come upon anything greater is strictly a human attribute. With this basic human characteristic taken from slaves, they were only left with a few human attributes- their own animal(prenominal) bodies, and their spirits although the former was often abused by the frequent lashes awarded by the masters, which left very openhanded scars on the back. For slaves however, maintaining their spirit and dignity, was probably far more complex. Every single event in the life story of a slave dehumanized them.Firstly, the auctions, where slaves were forced to strip down and dance like monkeys so potential buyers could evaluate their abilities. Then, a price was put on their head, and white men could simply buy another human being, and then take him home and enslave him. Also, no differentiation was made between men and youth (as displayed in one scene where all slaves walk beside each other) to carry an identical workload, no matter if one was 12 or 25. Masters had the power to do as they pleased with their slaves after purchase, but only them as a slave was their own personal property.In a confrontation, a plantation supervisor instructed some others after trying to lynch Solomon that Ford (plantation owner) holds the mortgage, and you have no hold to his life. It is incredibly ironic that since they did not own Solomon, they could not lynch, but whoever does can do as he pleases. All this dehumanizing tort ure would definitely break the spirit of almost any human. But, Solomon act to maintain his, and batten down others did as well, at all costs. He was willing to take vicious punishment for standing up to a supervisor.Also, after noticing another female slave crying endlessly, he told her that You let yourself be cover by sorrow, you will drown in it. Clearly Northrup tried his best to maintain his dignity, but preliminary to the exciting conclusion of his story, there is a very telling scene. Solomon was playing violin at a dance for his master and their friends. The violin represented for him a human experience, as he was able to accomplish more than just picking cotton, and the sound of an instrument is one of the most powerful human experiences.Although, at this ball, as he plays, the sorrowful background music of the movie plays over his song, and clouds out the sound of his violin. aft(prenominal) the ball Solomon smashed his violin into thousands of pieces. He recognized that even in a very human activity, he was still serving his master, and the music he played and everything he felt as a result of the music, all belonged to his owner. Despite the dramatization, it still vividly shows the despicable dehumanization suffered by slaves, and even those who tried to maintain their human dignity, eventually had everything stripped away.The slaves who had their humanity taken away were abused so greatly by their masters that for a viewer, it was hard to imagine these masters as human, just as they estimation of their slaves. Especially further down the Mississippi, like at Northrups plantation in Louisiana, the masters treated their slaves so deplorablely it was inconceivable to see them as human beings. Most notably, when whipping their slaves, masters stood over their workers and lashed them, with the lack of remorse of a jockey standing over his horse. When talking about whipping his slaves, Solomons Louisiana master said Sin. There is no sin.A man does as he pleases with his property. The master makes no recognition of the pain he inflicts upon his property, and it forces the viewer to see him as almost a sociopath. The same master also singled out an individual slave, Patsy, and tormented her in a way no reliable human would do. He was involved sexually with her, most likely against her will. He also whipped her brutally, and even once got Solomon to whip her, in order to see both of them suffer. Other white men demonstrated resembling non-human characteristics. At a slave auction, one buyer rhetorically asked a slave Are you a slave or nigger? .He showed so little respect for another human that it was simply impossible to see him as one either. The extreme cruelty was probably not something the owners were born with, though. It was something engrained in them by slavery being officially permitted and promoted. With official support for slavery, and no real regulations, owners were practically encouraged to abuse their sl aves. They learned nothing about the history of slavery or their individual slaves, so it was impossible for them to have any connection or compassion for their slaves. It could be considered the original ill-informed, American-centric principle.Truly, the masters such incredibly poor conduct and abuse of their slaves, no matter the justification dehumanized them as well, as no proper person could act in such a terrible way. It is quite impossible to understand the example justification for slavery in the U. S. No doubt the economic prospective was immense, but the responsibility of a government established for the people is responsible for just that, and encouraging slavery does just the opposite.It is indicative of a society, which at times even today, is more concerned with mythical end goals, thanfor the people who build and make them. The dream of the American South was to develop a perfect agrarian society, where mans morality and property were his own, and were respected b y the government and others. However, only the plantation owners were considered in this fantasy. Yes, the quantity of labour from the slaves was necessity in the development of the country as a whole, and a failure to fully employ their ample natural resources would have greatly stunted the development of the new countrys economy, but the manner taken contradicted the true goals of the country when it was established.Even Thomas Jefferson decried slavery in the Missing Clause of the constitution, and said . However, slavery existed for nearly 100 more years in the U. S. after Jefferson, as the South still considered it the best option for developing the country. Maybe it was justified then because the 14 million slaves who built American manufacture werent even considered human, they were only considered slaves.