Twelve Years a Slave : Chapitre 1 (commentaire composé)

...

listen to a member of his family, he's involved in the context, ready to meet and

discuss → Empathy.

→ Talks about his marriage, his wife, and his children.

• The freedom in which Solomon lived before these twelve years creates also a powerful

link between the slave and the white man, who can understand his feelings.

► All of this creates a very real character in the mind of the readers, in which they can easily

identify. People can live the slavery exerience through intimate view, Solomon become a man

like every others. Solomon and the reader are now sharing their time, space, and mind.

III – Search for involvement

• Enrolling in the slave narratives literary, the Northup's book respects its rules.

→ It has to try to convince the readers that slavery is bad.

• To begin with, he was a free man, as its readers. But – in the North, moreover –, the fate

made him slave for twelve years, deleting during all these years every aspects of the free

North americans' common life. Can the murder of freedom and humanity occur in

anybody's life, including the whitemen's life ?

• This idea implies the main axis of the Northup's search for involvement : does slavery

harm the fundamental values of the U.S.A. ?

→ There are main institutions the United States had been build on :

▪ Representative Democracy

▪ Protestant christianity

▪ Family and marriage

• Just by reading this incipit, we could see that Northup explains to what extent why ALL of

these institutions are flouted or perverted, and so – and that's the most important idea –

why it concerns all people that considers himself as an american → willingness to provide

the reader in his fight.

▪ Representative Democracy : his father was a free man who won the right to vote

for the considerable efforts he made during his life. Solomon had this right too

until this twelve years as a slave. By definition, there are people who don't make

part of the U.S. Democracy, even if they looked like all white american before

slavery. Moreover, the «Representative» side is flouted too : about 20 % of the U.S.

population was black slaves → It means that 1 american on 5 didn't have the right

to act in the country.

→ Slavery is against democracy.

▪ Protestant christianity : he believe in God («Him») but slavery caught him and tried

to break his spirit.

→ Slavery is against christianity.

▪ Family and marriage : slavery separated him from his family for 12 years. His

mother even died during this period without his son. His family name was also

changed : a true break with his family.

→ Slavery is against family.

• This implicit speech is very powerful. The reader, even the white man, feels too as a

particularly vulnerable victim of this system. The black man becomes the fellow of the

white man, who feels himself attacked by slavery that doesn't correspond to his ideals,

whether political, economic, social, or human → If the free man – common by essence to

all Americans – can become a slave, then all slaves are by definition Americans like

everyone else, deserving freedom.

→ At the end of all this story, when the reader recognizes himself in the life of Solomon,

this one tells that «Now had [he] approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the

thick darkness whereof [he] was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the

eyes of all [his] kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary

year.» → the white man says to himself : Oh I feel flouted. Northup implicitly says that thefreedom is in danger for all people, even whites, even if they live an american life.

Conclusion

The shocking literature doesn't each time make things moving. The hundred works

drafted by ex-slaves in the XIXth century have every time demonstrated the cruelty of the

practices of the Southern States, through poignant, upsetting, and realistic testimonies. But, only

a handful, including the object of this study, were able to be convincing and smart enough to

achieve their goal – slightly propagandist – with the uninitiated populations, and to induce the

step towards the exit of this dark period of the United States. Published a little bit after Uncle

Tom's Cabin, Solomon Northup's autobiography remains an essential work in the register of the

indignation