12 Years Slavery

Twelve Years a Slave Throughout the novel Twelve Years a Slave, there were many examples of wrongdoing towards the African slaves, a constant example of that was the dehumanization that they faced. Slaves played a crucial role in the southern societies, yet they faced some of the worst treatment that the world has seen to this day. They were unappreciated, abused, and treated as they were lesser than their “owners”. Slaves were disrespected and were given almost none of the rights as the white people in that time period. In addition to that they were separated from their families and were given no sympathy be the people that caused it. To the slave owners and the slave traders, slaves were work horses and were not a worthy as them due to the …show more content…
It ranged anywhere from beatings, being lynched, or being shot, nothing was too violent for the slave owners. They had no regard or concern for the pain that they were inflicting on other human beings, their screams and cries meant nothing to them, except that the slave was getting what the owner wrongly thought they deserved. It was almost ironic how willing the slave masters were to kill what they considered to be their “property”, slaves were very often killed, and hospitals at that time would have spaces dedicated to making coffins due to the extremely high death rate of slaves. The slaves worked crazy amounts and on average had about one day off that they could consistently count on, Christmas. They would work days on end. One of the female slaves that was enslaved by Epps with Solomon, named Patsey was forced to pick over double the amount of cotton that other slaves were forced to pick, and if she failed to do so, she was severely beaten, despite the fact she picked more than the other slaves. It shows how unfair and unjust the slavery system worked, someone was still able to be beaten when they outperformed everyone else. However, for the amounts of work that the slaves did, they were not properly conditioned to do all of it. They were fed the least amount possible that someone could be fed in order to survive. They lived in very unsanitary conditions, there were a few …show more content…
Even the free black people did not have as many rights, they were even allowed to be kidnapped and taken as a slave. Slaves were considered as property that was to be owned, not the people that they actually were. They were dehumanized to become property, or animals that were under the complete control of their master. Even with all the hard work that the slaves did, they did not get paid, not even for working extra, which caused them to be very poor, so even if they tried to run away they had no money to live off of. All other people of the American society got paid except for slaves. All of which shows how they were not treated equally to the people that were considered real humans and that got respect. The entire institution of slavery was based off the ideas that white people were above black people and that in order for the slaves to work properly, the slave masters thought they needed to physically and mentally abuse them. Slaves lead terrible lives in which they had no say in anything that happened, it was an unfortunate life filled with abuse and