Analysis Of 12 Years A Slave By Steve Mcqueen

Improved Essays
The movie 12 Years a Slave Directed by Steve McQueen was based off a memoir of Solomon Northup during 1840, who once was a free man. Northup, being a free man living in Saratoga, New York with his family, was a gifted and talent violinist. Consequently, Northup was sold into slavery through, trickery and deceit by kidnappers, who sought Northup for hire to play the violinist. The epic long journey that Northup illustrates how he had to transformed into a slave to survive slavery. The engrained of slavery was a formed of a total institution that represent the American’s society during the antebellum years. The total institution of slavery illustrates the following concepts: social disorganization, (role and master) statuses, conformity, …show more content…
Nevertheless, slavery was a major role throughout the south in the antebellum years. According too, Erving Goffman (1961),” total institution_ a place where people are isolated from the rest of society for a period of time and come under the complete control of the officials who rule the institution” (209-335). This type of institution forced men, women and children alike into bondage. Total institution repressed the slave identity, cultural, values and belief into a slave who live in chattel bondage. The paradigm of the total institution of slavery is that played devil advocate taken away the slave identity but it also took away the slave owner identity as well, because their values, moral or belief was taken away into the role they also played into slavery. Having both being bond into a system that tore apart the fabrication of the American’s core. That been said, the slave’s owner need the slave for resources without the slave help the slave’s owner would lose his status in society. So therefore, if the slave did not work on the plantation then he would be whipped furiously out of fear remains …show more content…
Suddenly Northup was thrust into slavery develop anomie according to Emily Durkheim, “ a loss of shared values and sense of purpose in society brought on by abrupt or rapid social change” (10). The name changing was the first part of grooming Platt for slavery because the new name took away his real identity. This concept was a form of social disorganization. Social disorganization is the fundamental basis of that “causes a breakdown in the traditional values and norms that serves a social control mechanism, which under normal circumstances, keep from engaging in nonconforming behavior” (10).
Now Northup, being disenfranchise of his high status in upstate New York is being placed into the lowest status of society a slave. Consequently, the slave owner is of higher status the master over the slave. His new name Platt represent his status in society which serves as constant reminder that he is not a free

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Slave owner wants to keep slaves under their thumb. There was a complete ignorance of the presence of slaves feeling. They were not getting paid for their work and so all these parts relates to violent. “Slave owners in the United States sought to completely subjugate their slaves physically, mentally and spiritually through brutality and demeaning acts” (Sullivan…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    This African naming ceremony connects slaves to their director family, extended family, land, and religion which was stolen from them when they reached America. The slave master denied slaves the right to uphold any cultural heritage to created control over their slaves. The entire slave instruction is dehumanizing to slaves as it rips individuals from their home countries, forces them onto a boat and then forced to slave labor where they have no forms of civil liberty. Once a slave stepped foot on a slave plantation they lost any notion of it means to be a human as they are nothing more than a tool for cheap labor. The slaves became bounded under the chains of slave labor force to work long hours under ghastly conditions all under the threat of the whip.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Patricia Palacios Uncle Tom’s Cabin Fall Term Paper Even though slavery might have been seen as beneficial to slave owners, it was still really cruel to its victims which lead to many people becoming abolitionists. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author’s intent is to convince her readers, especially the northern ones, that slavery is wrong and must be abolished due to the suffering lives of tortured slaves by showing how their human rights were violated, how their families were destroyed by separation, and the owners attitude towards them. All slaves had their human rights violated since they were being controlled by a master, a slave owner, who told them what to do for them. Most of the tasks the masters order their slaves…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, the struggles of slave life are illustrated through Douglass struggles and want for freedom from his oppressors. Douglass recounts the horrors of the American slavery system on both the slaves and slaveholders. The system as a whole destroy the very soul of all involve. From its effects on the slaves, in turning them into that of less than man but mere property and in the case of the slaveholders, they cease to display humane affinities but that of fiendish affinities. This system of American slavery can only breed the worsts qualities in a human.…

    • 1481 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Although Blacks have been freed from slavery, many institutions still covertly oppress the Black race through practices that mimic the racism of the past. Willie Lynch, a slave owner himself, created a set of rules that would make a slave obey his slave for life. His “full proof method” was made to disrupt families, marriages, and the psyches of slaves, and it did just that. Owners wanted to control breeding and bonds since they considered slaves less than human. The slave owners’ ideologies of gender roles for slaves were forced upon them.…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Echoing modern tales of fiscal insecurity among minority communities, much of Grimes’ fractured connection with the nation resulted from the destitution he experienced under an unjust government. Grimes wrote of the abolitionist North, “Let it not be imagined that the poor and friendless are entirely free from oppression where slavery does not exist.” Unable to climb the social ladder, the runaway slave…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The South has managed to completely separate slaves from their family. This makes the cruel and inhumane slavery of the South look even worse. Now they are not just treating these people as property, they are also taking away basic rights any human needs to have the will to live. The South was already being questioned for their morals by the union. The slave codes are what pushed theses morals to the breaking point and…

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slaves were tortured and beaten as if they were animals, who had done something wrong. The majority of slave owners brainwashed the Africans to believe the blacks were inferior and that the Negro’s were born only to work as slaves. Every day the whites had told most blacks this horrendous lie with the intentions of making it clear enough so the slaves would not argue against it. It was morally wrong to treat an African in such a manner. The operation of slavery was a direct violation of humanity.…

    • 1474 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    At the North he would freeze or starve." To the slaves owners they seen themselves helping the slaves, they believed slaves fate would be death. Slave holders can 't imagine blacks surviving on their own, if the were in Africa or the West Indies they would be seen as savages and they would die in the North because they would freeze. The mindset of a white person who lived in the South, and owned slaves was a lot different from the slave themselves, they kind of felt bad for the slaves. " We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relives him from a far more slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it Christianizes, protects, supports, and civilizes him" People in the South despised and had sympathy for the slaves they looked down upon them like they were animals who needed to be trained, they…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The quote also caused tension for people helping slaves escape because they would have to face the consequence of the law and slave catchers because they felt more pressure to catch the runaway slaves. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Address on The Fugitive Slave Law on May 3,1851, the fugitive slave act also created tension for the Union. Ralph stated “The Union is at an end as soon as an immoral law is enacted”(Doc D). This meant that by enacting the Fugitive Slave Law, the union would be destroyed because the law encouraged slavery. The Union was anti-slavery so the members in the Union disagreed with the Fugitive Slave Law which went against the Union’s objective, to abolish slavery.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics