I
started reading this book on the airport to New York (OMW to watch
Les Mis!)
Before
I read this book or watched the movie, the most I knew about this
story was the basic premise:
Based
on a true story...A free man sold into slavery, won best picture in
2012...Benedict Cumberbatch plays one of the southern slaveowners
etc...
So
when I was in the airport reading the book, I was expecting a pretty
straightforward account of Mr Solomon Northup's horrendous
experiences in the south of the United States; possibly sprinkled
about with anti-slavery propaganda appropriate for the time in which
it was written and the indended audience would obviously be the
people of the north. Basically I was expecting a heavy-handed expose
on the atrocities of the south.
These
expectations were seemingly reinforced when I read on the back cover
that the narrative had been completed with the assistance of a ghost
writer. So, I didn't go into this book expecting anything
extraordinary as far as literary quality (although his experiences
would certainly be worth reading about).
Well,
I won't say that parts of this book aren't heavy reading: it deals
with some very heavy topics. The story is told in a a first person
account, and it reads like something of a psychological
thriller/horror story. But as far as literary quality I was
completely mistaken; I don't think Solomon needed a ghostwriter to
tell his story. The account was absolutely riveting and it was
accompanied by an extremely thoughtful and on-point analysis of human
nature in general.
My
favorite part is when Solomon talks about his "Master"
Edwin Epps' eldest son:
"Young
Master Epps possessed some noble qualities, yet no process of
reasoning could lead him to comprehend, that in the eye of the
Almighty there is no distinction of color. [...] Brought up with such
ideas--in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity--no
wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting
race."
This
is an idea that's revisited several times in the story:
- William Ford is a really decent guy, he cares about people, even slaves...even people who he considers to be inferior.
- Mrs Epps is pretty decent too, when she's not supper jealous of Patsy.
- Mr Epps...well he's actually a law-abiding man (ie...he's
only as "bad" as the law will allow him to be.)
Solomon
is not trying to paint the white people of the south as these
atrocious monsters, these 'other' beings who need to be uprooted. He
recognizes that these people see the world...not in the way it
is...but the way they were taught that it is.
He's
trying to understand them! And he's granting them a complexity of
thought...a humanity...that he himself is denied.
#ugh!
#FEELS!
Another
really interesting thing about this book is how he overcomes the
whole slavery system they had set up in the south. I kept expecting
him to run away and get rescued, which probably says something about
the way I think about problems in general (the system as something
that needs to be defied...) but we see numerous reasons in this book
why that approach wouldn't work. Solomon repeatedly chooses to keep his head
down, to work in this system rather than fight because he knows that
people who run away don't get away. He knows he's not running from
the masters but from a whole line of thought that's existed for a
really long time and that permeates every aspect of their society.
It's
heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, thought provoking, riveting. And
the ending?!
Definitely
not a light read, but I highly recommend it if you want something
that's exciting and thought provoking at once.
And
now for the movie:
This
is more going to be a "what the movie missed" section. For
the most part, the movie is pretty loyal to the book. Solomon's home
life being told in flashbacks and, of course, the book can give us an
internal monologue that lest us get inside Solomon's mind in a way a
movie can't but I was actually very surprised at how much they were
able to fit into the film.
Here
are the differences I noticed though:
- Solomon and Anne had three kids, not two. Their names were
Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. (I think they took Elizabeth out
because they already had another character with the name Eliza).
- Uncle Abram has significance in the story other than just
dying. (In fact they kind of nerfed anyone who wasn't Patsy now that
I think about it...)
- In the book, we don't really know if William Ford was turning
a blind eye to the possiblity of Solomon being a free man. In the
movie, Solomon actually tells him and he just goes: "La-la-la
I can't hear you!" in the book, one of Solomon's
regrets seems to be that he didn't tell him because he didn't know
if he could trust Master Ford or not. (Remember, it's not these
people who are his enemies: it's a whole system)
- They never show the Epps' children; the eldest son would have
been around 12 or 13 at the end. So Solomon would have watched him
grow from infancy.
- The guy who "rescued" Solomon wasn't just Parker
the Random Store Clerk, his name was Henry Northup. (I think this
was done to avoid explaining why there is a black and white family
named Northup, although the explanation is actually quite simple.)
- In the book, Solomon never tells us anything explicitly sexual, however, it doesn't require a stretch of the imagination to realize the types of things depicted in the movie must have happened. It's there to show us how brutal this world is, there's nothing particularly seductive or explicit in it.
- Solomon's reunion with his family is even more of a
tear-jerker: Not only did his daughter name the first grandchild
after him, Solomon's son Alonzo was away with the aim of making
money to make a trip down to the south to find his father.
The acting of the three main leads is fantastic, the story is powerful, but I don't see this movie as one for casual viewing. I watched it by myself, and it's not one I wouldn't feel comfortable watching in a group unless we were gonna talk about it afterwards.
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