12 Years a Slave

Image of Solomon and his master Epps from 12 Years a Slave

According to Noah Berlatsky of the Atlantic, the movie 12 Years a Slave isn't completely accurate in regard to Solomon Northrop's autobiography. He describes the scene in which a slave woman makes use of Solomon's hand in order to satisfy her own sexual desires. He explains that this scene expresses the despondency and "fierce sadness" of both slaves, but how in a way the interaction represented "human contact and bitter comfort" in the sense that it was an emotional connection between them despite the miserable circumstances. However, this event never happened according to Northrop's autobiography, and the director added the instance in order to add a horrific incident that would give the audience an image as to the terrible things that slaves faced. Also, the slave that was killed on the ship by one of the sailors was not actually murdered according to Solomon's biography, but rather died of smallpox on the voyage. The film also failed to include the fact that Solomon had smallpox and that his face was scarred as a result. Berlatsky says that this is most likely left out of the movie so that Solomon's face would remain unblemished, and the viewers would be able to read his "beautiful, expressive, haunting features"and depict what the filmmakers were trying to insinuate. Another inconsistency Berlatsky describes is about the scene in which Patsy tells Solomon to drown her in the swamp. In his autobiography however, Solomon says that it was actually master Epps' wife who wanted him to drown Patsy. This discrepancy, Berlatsky says, was most likely due to a simple misunderstanding from autobiography to movie script. Berlatsky says that the fictional parts of the film are not used in a way that distracts from its main focus, but rather adds to the narrative being described. He provides an example of true stories being fictionalized by giving evidence that slave narratives were not written by the slaves themselves, but rather by white abolitionists. This caused there stories to be altered, due to the biases and differing opinions of the abolitionists. He goes on to describe how Solomon's own story was told by him to a white lawyer named David Wilson. He tells how this affected the biography's language and generally how it was told.

Slave Narratives

From my time researching these articles and narratives, I have gotten to know more about what slavery was like from various slaves' perspectives. While reading through the National Humanities Center about relationships between masters and slaves, I learned that slaver was mentally and emotionally challenging for both masters and slaves. Masters not only owned their slaves, they were in complete control, were harsh and overbearing, and were expected to be so. They were forced to assure themselves that what they were doing wasn't morally wrong, and that their belief that slaves were only property was good and true, even as they witnessed what the slaves were experiencing right in front of them. Slaves were not only compliant, but totally submissive and subject to their masters' rules. They would obsess over what they would do and say in order to keep their masters content and prevent anger or violence. This constant "self-monitoring" and self-examination must have been immensely taxing on them, which is part of the reason why slavery was so terrible. Slaves also had to think about why they were slaves in the first place, and wonder if they really were meant to be inferior like that, or if it was simply the harshness and oppressiveness of their masters that was the problem. The masters, in turn, had to convince themselves as well as the slaves that slavery was morally acceptable and was the way it should be. In what ways were masters challenged morally through slavery? What do you think it did to slaves mentally when they were told they were meant to be slaves, and were naturally inferior?

Paraphrase Practice

Lincoln Movie Review: The New York Times, A President Engaged in a Great Civil War

     "Lincoln's wife, Mary - he calls her Molly, and she is played with just the right tinge of hysteria by Sally Field - is still grieving the loss of another son, Willie, from illness during the first year of the war, and her emotional instability is a constant worry to her husband. These private troubles combine with the strains of a wartime presidency to produce a portrait that is intimate but also decorous, drawn with extraordinary sensitivity and insight and focused, above all, on Lincoln's character as a politician. 

     This is, in other words, less a biopic than a political thriller, a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy."

My Paraphrase of this Selected Passage:

     In the movie, Lincoln is continually concerned about his "hysterical" and "emotionally unstable" wife Mary, performed by actress Sally Field. Field is spot on with her representation of Mary and her reaction to the horrendous loss of her son Willie during the Civil War's inaugural year. Lincoln is shown balancing this personal home-life struggle with the stressful demands of being president, all while leading the nation through a bitter civil war. His portrayal in this film is extremely detailed and vivid, giving and inside glance at how Lincoln acted as a political leader during his presidency. This very personal look into Lincoln's life forces the film to be viewed primarily as a "political thriller" rather than a biography on his life, as there is too much focus on morality for it to be a completely non-fiction movie.

Baseball / Cricket in the Reconstruction Era

Cricket Player in the 19th Century

Baseball Player in the 19th Century

During the Reconstruction Era (mid to late 19th century), there was a game of cricket played between two teams in 1879. The game was between a cricket team called Daft's All England Eleven and a baseball team of eighteen baseball players. The game was played at the Union Baseball grounds in Brooklyn, and apparently the team of cricket players defeated the team of baseball players very handily and won the match. The news article, from the New York Herald, describes when and where the match was played, as well as the details of the names of the players, how the match went, and how it ended. It goes on to say that ten of the cricket players will play the Providence baseball men that night (the night the newspaper was published) in a baseball game. This information leads the reader to believe that the sports were crossing over in an attempt to acquire more attraction to each sport. Baseball might not have been as popular as cricket at the time, so the baseball players might have been playing cricket teams in order to gain more awareness and support from the community, or simply because there weren't very many other baseball teams to play.

The End of Reconstruction

Newspaper Reflection:

The newspapers showed me the general population's view of African Americans during this time period and in what light they thought about them. It was also weird to see words and phrases that are socially unacceptable in modern day, but were commonly used back then. These newspapers helped me to get a glimpse at the past and what life was like.

End of Reconstruction Research:

Reconstruction ended after Rutherford B. Hayes was elected. Republicans had given up hope for fighting for equality and rights for blacks, and after the election of 1877, the Union troops that had been in the South for protection were commanded to leave, leaving the blacks in the South susceptible to endless harshness and oppression. (I used the textbook as my source)