为奴十二年中人性与尊严

On Dignity and Self-Redemption of Human in

12 years a slave

Introduction

12 Years a Slave is a film adapted from Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name. It narrates the 12 years’ experience that the free man Solomon is kidnapped by two white men to be a slave in South America. The movie has won many awards in 2013. Freedom, dignity and redemption are the three parts of the theme of the film. In our society, there are great number of books, articles and movies on the subject of the slavery in the United States. As an important part of American history, the slavery has been researched by many scholars including its influences on African-Americans’ mentality, life, and social status, and also the racism. This thesis attempts to focus on the analysis of the perspectives of the personal experiences, internal world and language of different representative characters in the film. And then it will deeply research the impacts of dignity and self-redemption on slaves’fate and on our daily life.

1. Introduction to 12 Years a Slave and Characters

1. 1 Introduction to 12 Years a Slave

3 Oscar Awards for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 1841, in Saratoga Spring, New York,Solomon Northup, who is a free rich African-American man working as a violin player, lives with his wife and children. One day, two white men, Brown and Hamilton, disguise themselves as workers in a circus and want to offer Solomon a two-week job in Washington D.C as a violin musician. Solomon goes with them; however, Brown and Hamilton drug him and then sell him as a slave. All the things are clear when Solomon wakes up in a small black room with his hands and feet shackled. He resists and tells people that he is a free man, but what he gets are brutal beats. Then the cruel 12 years starts.

Solomon is shipped to New Orleans with other slaves and a slave trader gives him a

new name “Platt”. After struggling, for survive, Solomon had to hide his identity and the truth that he had ever been educated. His first master called William Ford who is more kind than his second owner, and Solomon helps Ford a lot transporting logs without much efforts, however, it contributes to Ford’s carpenter John Tibeats’s resentments to Solomon. Tibeats attacks Solomon who defenses him.Tibeats and his friends attempt to lynch Northup, but they are prevented by Ford's overseer, Chapin, though Northup is left in the noose standing on tiptoe for many hours. Ford finally cuts Northup down, but chooses to sell him to planter Edwin Epps to protect him from Tibeats.

The second master Edwin Epps, called by people “nigger breaker”, is a sadistic man who regards those black people as accessories belonging to them which can be used by any way they want. Epps is attracted to Patsey, a young female slave in his home, and repeatedly rapes her, causing Epps' wife to become jealous and frequently humiliate and degrade Patsey. Patsey's only comfort is visiting Mistress Shaw, a former slave whose owner fell in love with her and elevated her to Mistress. Patsey wishes to die and begs Northup to kill her but he refuses.

Eventually, a Canadian carpenter Solomon met before called Bass who is a abolitionist helps Solomon send a letter to hometown, and he went back home at last.

1.2 Social Background

The film reappears from 1841 to 1853 the twelve years’ real life of Solomon as well as the black slaves’in some extent. Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of chattel slavery that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was recognized in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In the years when the story of the film happened, Northern America had abolished the slavery, and black slaves were all free and had their own life. In the South America, slave trade still existed, and those African-Americans were oppressed without any dignity. At the same time, in the south agriculture technology was far more developed than the north causing high demand of workers. The slave trade became more popular in the South America and some of people also kidnapped the black from the north. The population of slaves skyrocketed in 1810