Background of the Study
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http:dwikacahayu.blogspot.com201411etika-bisnis.html on Monday 19 Jan 2015 9:40 am.
Humans are special creatures that are gifted a free will. They are created to have their own thoughts, freedom, and rights in making a better living. They have
same position. But, as the time goes, people develop and cause several differences: some people get higher position and power while the others do not. People are
divided into 2 types based on their position and power: high and low, strong and weak. It is a good thing when higher and stronger people protect or support the lower
and weak people. On the contrary, it will be bad when the high and strong people suppress the weak one. They control the low and weak people by taking their rights
and make them as their underling or slave to fulfill their needs effortlessly. Slavery can be in many forms: helper, maid, and so on that are treated so badly by their boss.
The examples above show that how bad slavery towards human rights is. It causes injustice towards people. It cannot be denied that until todayhumansare
stilltradedandused asslavesinmanycountries aroundthe world: hiddenslaveryinfactories,on farms, athomeandother placesinthe citiesof the
richestand poorest countries inthe world. Slavery happenedsincemany centuries ago in many countries: Sumer, Ancient
Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the IslamicCaliphate, the Hebrew kingdoms in
Palestine, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas retrieved from http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiSlavery on Monday 19 Jan 9:45 am.
Slavery in America began in the 16
th
century when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 by
Dutch slave traders as exchanges for foods. These African slaves were taken from
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West coast of Africa where the main ports of slave trader existed.The conditions on the slave ships were terrible. The slaves were often packed tightly in the ships
hold where they were chained up and unable to move. Many slaves died during the trip due to disease and starvation retrieved
fromhttp:www.ducksters.comhistorycivil_rightshistory_of_slavery_in_the_unit ed_states.php on Wednesday 11 Feb 2015 11:03 pm. Later they became indenture
servants that worked in tobacco, sugar, rice and cotton fields.
In the early 17
th
century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants who
were mostly poorer Europeans. As the effect, slavery spread throughout the American colonies and imported slave demand increased until to the late 18
th
century. But, most of slaves were treated so badly. As Schneider 2007:78 said that almost always the slave traders and slave owners who received them treated them as
savages to be subdued, workers whose power had to be harnessed, and sources of profit—not as human beings. The slaves had been stripped of their status, their
names, their families and friends, and their customs and culture. In the 19
th
century, a movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength in the northern United States, led by free blacks such as Frederick Douglass and
white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery
novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” 1852. Free blacks and other antislavery northerners had begun helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a
loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice was known as the Underground Railroad. The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread
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abolitionist feelings in the North retrieved from
http:www.history.comtopicsblack-historyslavery on Wednesday 11 Feb 2015 11:05 pm
Slavery and injustice inspire many people in writing a literary work, especially for those who experience it, because it does not conform to the moral and
human rights. Literary work is a good way to portray and criticize the society at the time it happens and also to convey the opinions that can open up the world’s eyes
and change the world as Lenvin 1973:63 said that literature is not only the effects of social causes but also the cause of social effects. The literary work itself is divided
into three kinds of genre: prose, poetry or drama. Novel is one of many ways to share the ideas, opinion, or feeling through
literary work. It is subgenre of prose. It is often used as a medium to portray a society. As Michel Zeraffa in Burns 1973:35 said that novel derives more closely
from social phenomena than do those of other arts…; novels often seem bound up with particular moments in the history of society. That is why novel is often
considered as a social documentation, and it contains and relates to the history of society in a certain time. Through novel, the authors share their ideas of what is
happened in society and the issue that occur at the time. There are so many social issues that emerge in social life, such as poverty, violence, suicide, sexual abuse,
human rights, racial discrimination, slavery and injustice. These issues are shown in Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.
Twelve Years a Slave is a slavery narration which is based on true life story of Solomon Northup, a freed African-American man who was kidnapped in
Washington DC, held in a slave pen and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South
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in 1841. This novel was first published in 1853. This novel shows his struggle in the cruel situation for black people in America at the time: slavery, injustice, racial
discrimination, and so on more detail and accurate. He also shows that black slaves are treated so mean and have no rights to speak up for freedom. Through this novel,
he wants to tell the reader that slavery steals human rights and freedom. This situation is very bad. That is why slavery should be removed from the world.
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup became an instant bestseller, and exactly 160 years later,this novel was adaptedinto a filmin 2013andwas nominated
foran Academy Award. According to pastispresent.org, Northup’s book not only supplied the film’s narrative, it also provided the filmmaker’s motivation and
inspiration. The director have revealed in interviews that reading a copy of the physical book Twelve Years a Slave made them determined to make the movie
retrieved fromhttp:pastispresent.org2014good-sourcestwelve-years-a-slave-the- book-truth-stranger-than-fiction on Tuesday 27 Jan 2015 8:25 pm. Director Steve
McQueen described how he was introduced to Northrup’s memoir by his wife as quoted from Fresh Air Interview, NPR, October 24, 2013:
“[My wife] found this book called 12 Years a Slave, and I read this book, and I was totally stunned. It was like a bolt coming out
of the sky; at the same time I was pretty upset with myself that I didn’t know this book… I basically made it my passion to make
this book into a film.”
Moreover, Twelve Years a Slave is used as the reinforcement of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Northup and his editor dedicated the 1854
second edition to Harriet Beecher Stowe, in recognition of her widely successful antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852. Northup’s experience as a slave
depicted a “striking parallel” to Stowe’s fictitious account of the slave named Uncle
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Tom under the hands of his tyrannical master. In response to the critics who had denounced Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a sentimental, overly exaggerated portrayal of
slavery, Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853 to prove that her novel was a truthful depiction of antebellum slavery. She wrote in A Key, “it is a
singular coincidence, that Solomon Northup was carried to a plantation in the Red River county—that same region where the scene of Uncle Tom’s captivity was
laid—and his account of this plantation, and the mode of life there, and some incidents which he describes, form a striking parallel to that history.” Frederick
Douglass’ Paper described the book upon its release in 1853: “It is a strange history, its truth is far stranger than fiction.” It is because the fact that most of
Northup’s captivity took place in the same Red River region of Louisiana as Stowe’s novel setting retrieved from
http:www.ushistoryscene.comuncategorized12yearsaslave on Tuesday 27 Jan 2015 7:40 pm.