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.