Examples Of Dehumanization In 12 Years A Slave
Slaves’ Resistance Against Dehumanization
American slavery was an institution that relied on violence to secure the obedience and submission of enslaved African Americans. This violence was often not only physical but psychological as well, as the ultimate goal of slavery was to eradicate any and all claims African Americans had to their own humanity. Although the institution of slavery constantly and unrelentingly worked to dehumanize its subjects, slaves found ways to resist both its physical and psychological traumas. In Solomon Northup’s aptly named memoir “Twelve Years a Slave”, he describes the horrors which he had to endure when slave traders kidnapped him and sold him into slavery together with the ways in which he and his fellow slaves …show more content…
Excessive violent punishments were the main tool in the slaveowner’s arsenal to obtain and maintain the submission of a slave. Oftentimes, slaveowners punish their slaves for the slightest misstep and even prematurely punished them to keep them from fostering the idea of misbehaving. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, Solomon Northup became intimately acquainted with the senseless brutality of slavery on the very first day of his kidnapping, when his kidnappers beat him mercilessly for asserting his freedom (Northup 43-45). While Northup finds a small reprieve from the more atrocious aspects of slavery during his time as Ford’s slave, the horrors began anew when he was leased to Tibeats and worked on Turner’s plantation. During his time on that plantation, Solomon saw an opportunity to help a number of his peers evade punitive discipline. When Turner caught three slaves by the names of Warner, Will, and Major stealing melons on the Sabbath, Northup was charged with seeing out their punishment of locking them in the stockades for their “crimes”. Northup quickly realized the masters would be gone at church all day and decided to help them avoid their punishment - which they repaid him for by showing him the melon fields - and only put them in moments before the masters came back for the day (Northup
American slavery was an institution that relied on violence to secure the obedience and submission of enslaved African Americans. This violence was often not only physical but psychological as well, as the ultimate goal of slavery was to eradicate any and all claims African Americans had to their own humanity. Although the institution of slavery constantly and unrelentingly worked to dehumanize its subjects, slaves found ways to resist both its physical and psychological traumas. In Solomon Northup’s aptly named memoir “Twelve Years a Slave”, he describes the horrors which he had to endure when slave traders kidnapped him and sold him into slavery together with the ways in which he and his fellow slaves …show more content…
Excessive violent punishments were the main tool in the slaveowner’s arsenal to obtain and maintain the submission of a slave. Oftentimes, slaveowners punish their slaves for the slightest misstep and even prematurely punished them to keep them from fostering the idea of misbehaving. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, Solomon Northup became intimately acquainted with the senseless brutality of slavery on the very first day of his kidnapping, when his kidnappers beat him mercilessly for asserting his freedom (Northup 43-45). While Northup finds a small reprieve from the more atrocious aspects of slavery during his time as Ford’s slave, the horrors began anew when he was leased to Tibeats and worked on Turner’s plantation. During his time on that plantation, Solomon saw an opportunity to help a number of his peers evade punitive discipline. When Turner caught three slaves by the names of Warner, Will, and Major stealing melons on the Sabbath, Northup was charged with seeing out their punishment of locking them in the stockades for their “crimes”. Northup quickly realized the masters would be gone at church all day and decided to help them avoid their punishment - which they repaid him for by showing him the melon fields - and only put them in moments before the masters came back for the day (Northup