12 Years A Slave Essay

Violence in Twelve Years a Slave and Gangs of New York In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup, an esteemed violin player and free black, is kidnapped and forced into slavery. He is beaten into submission by white slave owners, with paddles and whips. This violence is so that Northup and the other blacks who were kidnapped won’t fight back or resist. The white men who sell the slaves only see them as money or property. Even the rich plantation owners who seem kind still see the slave as mere property. The slaves are shown no mercy. Violence creates unrest among the people who are beaten, but the people who were beaten their whole life only know fear. In one scene, Northup refuses to be beaten and beats up one of the slave overseers. The slave …show more content…
The gangs, usually representing businesses, fought each other for power and dominance. Throughout the movie there is a prejudice of the New Yorkians against the people immigrating to New York and the people immigrating to New York, mostly the Irish since there was a famine in Ireland at the time, did not much like the New Yorkians either. In the opening of the movie we see a gang war between the Dead Rabbits and the Natives over who would control the Five Points, an intersection between five roads where a lot of business go on. The leader of the Natives, Bill the Butcher, kills the leader of the Dead Rabbits, Priest Vallon, and the fighting stops. The Dead Rabbits gang is disbanded by the Natives and the Natives gain control over the Five Points. Gang wars aren’t the only violence in the movie though. In one scene, the main protagonist, Amsterdam, is insulted by a man in a bar in front of the Bill the Butcher and so Amsterdam must fight so that he shows that he is not to be taken lightly and to defend his honor. This type of violence is more common than the gang wars. And serves its purpose well, since the man Amsterdam beat would most likely not insult or mess with him again. Though he would still have more respect if he had lost than if he chickened out of the fight. So, to him and the society at the time his only option was

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