12 Years A Slave Rhetorical Analysis

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12 Years A Slave was a novel written by Solomon Northup that described his life as a slave after he had been captured and sold into bondage. Northup was born a free black man in the state of New York where he settled down, married, and had three children. When Northup was thirty-three years old, he was captured and sold into slavery to a plantation owner in Louisiana. Solomon would be confined in slavery for twelve years before finally being rescued. Throughout the novel, Solomon Northup uses various rhetorical strategies to develop and support his argument that slavery is a morally wrong practice. Throughout the early sections of the novel, Northup uses his experiences to develop ethos to establish his credibility on the topic. Early in the novel, Northup announces that he “can speak of Slavery only as far as it came under [his] own observation” (1). In this announcement, Northup is able to estable strong ethos because he …show more content…
Throughout the novel, Northup uses various similes and metaphors to depict slaves as animals. At one point in the novel, Northup discusses the consequence of revealing his freedom by writing “that [he] would be disposed of as the thief disposes of his stolen horse” (59). The comparison made by Northup makes it evident that the slave masters viewed slaves as no more than animals. The comparison also supports the argument that slavery is morally wrong because it exhibits that slave owners dehumanized colored people. At another point, Northup describes the way Master Epps looked at slaves by writing that “He looked upon a colored man, not as a human being . . . but as a ‘chattel personal,’ as mere live property, no better, except in value, than [a] mule or a dog” (129-30). The description made by Northup again displays the morally wrong dehumanization of colored people by

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