12 Years A Slave

For several years (before most people ever heard of Solomon Northup) our classes have been reading, analyzing, discussing, and writing about their reactions to excerpts from Solomon Northup's "12 Years a Slave"....Solomon Northup was a Free Black New Yorker who was kidnapped and sold into slavery (1841-1853) on several Louisiana plantations. “12 Years a Slave” is definitely a book/ movie that bears reading/watching because it honestly tells the story of the dehumanizing and brutal sin of slavery...

But more profoundly, the story allows us to deeply question how the present reflects the past...why race is still an issue that weakens the "Dream of America"...consider silence/ apathy/ ignorance as a "form of survival"...understand who the true heroes of America really are...

Early in the book (page 77), Solomon writes:

 "Could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home—that I had been driven through the streets like a dumb beast— that I had been chained and beaten without mercy—that I was even then herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? Were the events of the last few weeks realities indeed?—or was I passing only through the dismal phases of a long, protracted dream? It was no illusion. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted up my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, forsaken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all—the freeman and the slave—I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumberers, ushering in another day of bondage."

Solomon's story (and the majority of the movie) seems to be dedicated to prove that his spirit and the spirit of the other slaves (who had never experienced freedom) could never be broken...and that his true freedom was found through the slaves (especially Patsey) who would never refuse to give up hope.

 Page 260...
"Patsey's life, especially after her whipping, was one long dream of liberty. Far away, to her fancy an immeasurable distance, she knew there was a land of freedom. A thousand times she had heard that somewhere in the distant North there were no slaves—no masters. In her imagination it was an enchanted region, the Paradise of the earth. To dwell where the black man may work for himself—live in his own cabin—till his own soil, was a blissful dream of Patsey's—a dream, alas! the fulfillment of which she can never realize."

In my opinion, Patsey (and the millions of slaves whose names we will never know) is the true hero of this story. She is continually brutalized...but never defeated. After being forced to whip Patsey, Solomon breaks his fiddle, and seems to hear and understand (while singing "Roll Jordan Roll) for the first time, the true meaning of the slaves' indomitable spirit...the light of freedom in the darkness of slavery.

This is truly a book and movie for the ages.

Watch "Roll Jordan Roll" Clip (1:56)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFcFzJT7Tw